Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

HR practiceHR strategyHR TechnologyFacilitiesProductivity

Face off

by Personnel Today 9 Aug 2005
by Personnel Today 9 Aug 2005

According to Neil Laver, head of Microsoft UK Real Time Collaboration, recent research has found that business people attend an average of 61.8 meetings per month and they consider more than 50% of this meeting time to be wasted.


If each of those meetings is an hour long then this means staff are losing 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings – or about four working days.


Considering these statistics, it is no surprise that virtual meetings are gaining in popularity, particularly at a time when the work-life balance is so high up the agenda of many organisations.


WebEx, a provider of virtual meetings technology, claims that at the end of every day 30,000 virtual meetings will have taken place across the world. But can they really replace face-to-face meetings?


Research conducted in October 2004 by the University of Bradford into the use of virtual meetings by 4,900 BT employees revealed some of the benefits.




  • It eliminated 296,000 face-to-face meetings a year.


  • Each avoided “real’ meeting saved BT at least £432 in travel cost and time.


  • BT saved about £128m in 2004 by using conferencing – more than 10 times what the company spent on it


  • It cut the company’s carbon dioxide emissions by 47,400 tonnes.

There are other, less tangible, but equally important benefits.


Almost 60% of respondents at BT said that conferencing has had a positive impact on their work-life balance.


Paul Smith, marketing director at recruitment company Harvey Nash, said that about 60% of his company’s project meetings were now being done virtually.


“The main benefit is that we don’t have to wait until everyone is in the same place. We make decisions and deliver our services much more rapidly. We’re also able to keep more people in the loop for a longer time,” he said.


However, not everyone is so impressed by virtual meetings.


Unsurprisingly, general manager of the Strand Palace Hotel, Peter O’Meara, is not a fan.


“People interact better when sat opposite a real person. Until and unless that can be replicated technologically, by speeding up the whole process, making it simple to work and inexpensive, then our meeting rooms at the hotel will continue to be in demand,” he said.


His view is supported by Arabella Ellis, a business psychologist at consultants OCG.


“We depend so much on non-verbal signals – eye and face movements, gestures and postures – that, without them, we don’t feel safe to trust the information,” she said.


“Virtual meetings should only be used when face-to-face is not possible, where the meeting is for information download and not discussion and where people know each other well.”


The ideal solution appears to be to use a combination of face-to-face and virtual meetings and to apply best practice to virtual meetings.


Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

This involves adequate preparation, an agenda, a chairperson who moves the meeting along and ensures everyone is included, and accurate minutes being circulated and agreed after the meeting.


Martin Galpin, a business psychologist at occupational psychology practise Pearn Kandola said that if virtual meetings were well thought through and balanced with face-to-face input at the appropriate times, they could become “an excellent tool to help us get better solutions, in less time, and still finish work in time for dinner”.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
RBS sets up online system to spread HR best practice
next post
UK business urged not be be a drain on nation’s water supplies

You may also like

Stop chasing quick fixes: return to the office...

3 Jul 2025

NHS 10-year Health Plan sets out vision for...

3 Jul 2025

Fall in entry-level jobs linked to rise of...

30 Jun 2025

With HR absence rising, is your people team...

24 Jun 2025

How smarter collaboration can eliminate the workplace productivity...

23 Jun 2025

Sniff a lemon on World Productivity Day and...

20 Jun 2025

Only a third of recruiters receive high-quality job...

20 Jun 2025

WFH employee who falsified timesheets loses unfair dismissal...

16 Jun 2025

CIPD Festival of Work: ‘Wellbeing is not an...

11 Jun 2025

How to overcome loneliness in the digital workplace

9 Jun 2025

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+