PayScale Tools
Meeting Miser: Expert Q&A;
We think Meeting Miser is a great new tool for costing meetings, but you don't have to take our word for it. We had two industry experts take it for a test drive: April Callis, author of "Springboard to Success: Strategies To Keep Business Casual From Making Business...Casual" and senior change management consultant for Navigator Management Partners, and Shirley Fine Lee, meeting facilitator and author of "R.A!R.A! A Meeting Wizard's Approach."
Q. Have you ever used a tool like Meeting Miser?
Shirley Fine Lee: The closest I've come to a tool like Meeting Miser was a macro-based spreadsheet I created years ago. The spreadsheet used an average company hourly rate typed in for each attendee. The slowest part of the process was finding an average rate to use since asking people their salary is a corporate no-no. Users had to get the data from a Human Resources contact or a knowledgeable manager. Since the Meeting Miser tool accesses Payscale.com data, it provides average rates for each job title without having to ask anyone!
Q. How can Meeting Miser affect the bottom line?
Shirley Fine Lee: Meetings are mostly an overhead function, so it could make managers more aware of what they are spending on meetings. However, it does not tell them whether that time was used effectively or not. For it to truly affect the bottom line, managers need to determine which meetings need to discontinue, shorten, or improve to increase productivity while reducing overhead costs. Discontinuing unnecessary meetings will reduce costs, but discontinuing most meetings will impact productivity. The answer to reducing meeting costs is to move bad meetings to good and good ones to better. This movement can make a big difference in the amount of time and productivity required from people in meetings.
April Callis: I think meetings would be more likely to start and end on time if Meeting Miser were projected on a screen during the meeting. When meetings are productive, decisions are made and work is assigned. The Meeting Miser could be a good way to identify which meetings are productive and which meetings are expensive wastes of time.
Q. Do you think a tool like Meeting Miser could also have psychological impact on employees?
Shirley Fine Lee: I think there will be a shock factor for both employees and their managers when they see what is being spent in dollars and hours. Employees already know what meetings they think are beneficial or a waste of time. Knowing the company may be losing money in a bad meeting might disappoint them and make them want to improve their meetings. Hopefully they will recognize that management is investing both time and money to increase communication and job productivity by encouraging better meetings.
April Callis: Employees might prepare more for meetings if they knew the Meeting Miser were going to be ticking away while they were being updated on information or decisions that they should have or could have caught up with on their own. It might also create anxiety for those who are nervous about being concise or uncomfortable with presenting.
Q. You can save all of your Meeting Miser meetings and export the information to Excel. How would you suggest meeting facilitators and managers use this data?
Shirley Fine Lee: I would suggest managers and facilitators use the data from Meeting Miser to increase awareness about what meetings are costing the company. They can then encourage their employees to hold only necessary meetings and make those meetings more effective. In my book, "R.A!R.A! A Meeting Wizard's Approach," I show a scale that indicates meeting effectiveness. An effective meeting scoring over 60 percent is typically a good time investment and would get a green light. The norm for meetings is 40-60 percent, so average meetings would be yellow light. Any meeting scoring less than 40 percent would be red light as a potential loss of valuable time. Scoring on this scale may be based on meeting evaluation results or how much of the meeting agenda was accomplished.
April Callis: Look at how many hours per week individuals are spending in meetings and determine whether or not their workload needs adjusting.
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