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The Cost Of The Face-To-Face Business Meeting


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£17b A Year Wasted On Unneccessary Face-To-Face Business Meetings

Polycom, the leader in collaborative communications solutions, today announced results from a ‘Congested Lives’ research study of over 1,200 businesses employees in the UK, indicating that unnecessary face-to-face meetings cost UK businesses £17 billion annually. Additionally the findings of the survey, showed office workers waste 23 days on average each year traveling to and from appointments.

The research shows that two-thirds (67%) of office professionals across the UK travel at least once a week for work-related meetings, and that an overwhelming majority (82%) who have travelled to meetings in the last year believed many of these meetings were unnecessary and could have been accomplished over the phone.

• Nearly a quarter (23%) of those surveyed believe 1-2 hours of their time could be saved each week by not attending off-site meetings, with one in five (21%) saying 3-4 hours of their time could be saved per week and one in ten (11%) believing 5-6 hours could be saved

• Over one half (57%) of people who travel for business say they are less productive in their job as a result

• The vast majority of respondents (88%) of people leaving the office for meetings weekly are board-level executives, followed closely by senior managers or directors (76%)

• 50% of professionals have to plan their work schedule around external meetings, and believe meetings impact the speed at which their company can make business decisions

• 48% say they travel more on business than they did five years ago

• Office workers in London, Yorkshire and The Humber and East Midlands (70%) travel the most for out-of-office meetings and only 53% of office workers in the North East travel for meetings

• Those working as business, management and professional consultants travel the most to off-site meetings (83%). Those working in the retail sector travel the least (46%)


This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 9:53 am and is filed under B2B News, Customer Satisfaction, Industry News, SMEs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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