How Digital Signage Can Help Better Manage Meetings in the Workplace

Did you know that there are about 55 million meetings held weekly in the US. If you were to put money on it, how many do you think “could have been an email”?

If you’d wager that around 71% of those meetings are considered unproductive, you’d be right. In hard-cash terms, that amounts to a jaw-dropping loss of $37 billion annually - according to 2022 meeting stats.

That’s chunks of money and time just thrown into the water.

Meetings have thus notably become serial-productivity-killers as they’ve been completely missing their objectives to collaborate, solve problems, and ultimately getting work done. 

It raises one important question. How (or perhaps, ‘if’) companies are efficiently managing meeting schedules to ensure employees' time is used relevantly,  to give them the best possible chance of keeping uninterrupted focus on productive tasks, while receiving more valuable communications.

Implementing effective and streamlined communication methods in the workplace - such as workplace digital signage and industrial display screens - can help scale back meetings, free up email inboxes and give teams back focus-time - all by seamlessly broadcasting targeted messaging to desked or deskless teams.

Think of workplace digital signage as a single, centralized communication hub that connects companies and company narratives to employees - all while it increases productivity, encourages participation and boosts autonomy among employees. 

Let’s explore a little deeper.

Boost employee productivity

Employee productivity is the grease of a company’s well-oiled machine.

So, when 65% of employees confirm that meetings prevent them from completing their work, it’s probable that sooner or later your workforce’s wellbeing and morale will start falling apart.

There’s a lot more that goes into a meeting than simply attending: there’s pre-meeting prep, note-taking, post-meeting prep and actioning key items with subsequent updates - more like adding to employees’ plates, rather than offloading. 

Companies must therefore adopt an empathetic approach towards employees’ workloads and wellbeing that avoids the burnout of repetitive meeting-redundancy.

More than that, businesses should also view ruthless meeting-cutbacks as a means of better-incentivising pursuit of KPI achievement and employee ownership and independence.

Optimally planning meetings in efforts to boost employee productivity with digital signage can be done by: 

• Displaying the context or purpose of a ‘supposed meeting’ with autonomous action items with employee allocations and deadlines.
• Previewing a clear and concise agenda ahead of schedule to ensure employees are well prepared for the meeting.
• Presenting employees’ calendars to considerably manage and coordinate meetings within the company.
• With a built-in meeting room app, employees can easily schedule meetings with no risk of a room being double-booked.
• Live broadcasting of meetings on industrial screens across various sites can reach even the most displaced employees.
  

Encourage workforce participation 

Frontline employees don’t share the same luxury of being able to ‘meet quickly’ with their teams or management to talk strategy or improvements around the workplace. 

And while 80% of a company’s opportunity to improve comes from frontline employees, they are reliant on the alternative communication methods to get their ideas across. However, these methods are seldomly made available, leaving employees frustrated and disengaged. 

Supporting the above statement, the 2022 meeting stats indicated that 1/4 of employees feel that their ideas were being ‘stifled’ due to poor communication. And additionally, 12% of employees are less likely to share ideas in the workplace because they don’t have access to the right platforms.

This brings communication and lack of access to collaboration tools to the forefront and as the wedge between companies and employees. 

But, what happens when you give employees access to collaboration tools? 63% of employees become more empowered to share their ideas, leading to increased employee engagement and participation. 

Workplace digital signage, and the numerous integrated apps available, encourage employee engagement and participation by allowing them to share content through a company’s preferred communication portal(s). 

More than that, employees feel heard and galvanized to innovate when companies recognize and implement workplace improvement recommendations from their employees, and by showcasing the results to the company. 

Build autonomy and confidence among employees

Scaling back on meetings, and regular impromptu follow-up sessions with employees, can empower them to think on their feet and discover their own personal solution methods.

Creating a sense of autonomy can boost employees’ confidence and morale, while  accelerating professional development.

Employees can be assured that their professional achievements are being noticed when employers celebrate them publicly via their industrial screens around the workplace. 

Say goodbye to meetings that could have been an email, and well, even (some) emails. We know that more than 55% of remote employees will thank you for it.

Get in touch with ScreenCloud’s dedicated team to learn how you can improve your employees’ productivity by reducing meetings in your workplace with digital signage and hardware solutions.