Bad meetings have long been dismissed as little more than an unavoidable workplace annoyance. A new global study suggests they're something far more serious.
According to The Cost of Bad Meetings, a report by Jabra's Research Institute, ineffective meetings are quietly costing large businesses more than $130 million every year through wasted time, technology failures and the extra work they create afterwards. The report describes this as "meeting debt", an often invisible productivity cost that builds over time but rarely appears on a balance sheet.
India appears to be among the countries feeling the impact the most. Employees here spend an average of 8.8 hours every week in meetings, one of the highest figures among the seven markets surveyed, while 90 per cent say they experience some level of meeting dread.
The report surveyed over 2,300 knowledge workers across seven countries and found that the average employee spends nearly two-and-a-half months every year in meetings. Yet workers believe 58 per cent of that meeting time is unnecessary, equivalent to roughly 26 working days lost annually per employee.
The findings suggest the problem isn't simply the amount of time spent in meetings, but how little value many of them create. Employees who spend more time in meetings are also more likely to dread them, highlighting what the report describes as a growing disconnect between collaboration and productivity.
One of the report's biggest findings is that the damage caused by a bad meeting often continues long after everyone has left the room.
According to the study, 66 per cent of employees leave meetings without clear action items, while 59 per cent require follow-up meetings simply to clarify decisions. Another 59 per cent say poor meetings generate additional work afterwards, creating a cycle of unnecessary tasks that further eats into productivity.
Technology issues continue to make matters worse. Around 75 per cent of hybrid meetings experience at least one technical failure, while roughly seven in ten meetings involve participants struggling to see or hear each other clearly. Hybrid meetings were also found to be significantly more prone to technical issues than fully remote sessions.
Taken together, the report argues that these seemingly minor disruptions accumulate into what it calls "meeting debt", quietly reducing efficiency across organisations.
The study also questions the belief that AI alone can solve workplace collaboration problems.
Although three-quarters of employees have experimented with AI-powered meeting tools, fewer than one in three use them regularly. According to the report, AI can improve note-taking, summaries and follow-up tasks, but it cannot compensate for meetings that lack clear objectives or suffer from poor technology.
Commenting on the findings, Peter Jayaseelan, Regional Vice President, APAC South at Jabra, said India's workplaces have become some of the world's most collaboration-intensive environments, but many employees continue to spend a significant portion of their workweek in meetings that fail to deliver meaningful outcomes.
As organisations continue investing in AI and digital transformation, the report concludes that improving meeting quality, rather than simply adding more technology, could unlock significant productivity gains while reducing one of the workplace's most overlooked business costs.