少開會多省錢 4大實戰高招避免會議成災浪費錢

The math isn’t complicated, but the results are startling. Start with a company that has 20,000 salaried employees, many of them highly skilled. Then figure that their average total compensation per person is $100,000 annually. Let’s say each one spends a very conservative 15% of his or her time every year in unproductive meetings. Total annual cost to the company of the time lost: $300 million.

計算過程並不複雜，但結果卻令人吃驚。首先，假設一家公司有20,000名領取薪水的職員，其中包括許多技術精湛的人才。之後計算出這些員工的人均年薪爲100,000美元。保守估計，假如每個人每年在低效會議上花費15%的時間。那麼公司在這方面浪費的時間所造成的損失是多少？答案是：3億美元。

That’s what researchers at analytics firm VoloMetrix found when they studied how meetings are managed at more than two dozen big U.S. companies. In one typical organization, senior management meetings alone ate up about 300,000 hours, or the equivalent of one executive working full-time for 144 years.

以上是分析公司VoloMetrix的調查結果。這家公司的調查人員研究了二十多家美國大型公司的會議管理方式。在一家極具代表性的公司，僅管理高層會議便已經花去了約300,000個小時，相當於一名高管全職工作144年。

It’s hard to gauge exactly what gets accomplished in most of those confabs, of course, but VoloMetrix did look at how much multitasking goes on. “One way to measure productivity is to count how many emails each attendee sends,” notes CEO Ryan Fuller, since emailing and texting are “an indication that people aren’t 100% engaged in the discussion, perhaps because they don’t really need to be there.” The average participant now sends at least three emails for every 30 minutes of meeting time, the Volometrix data show—not counting the incoming messages that he or she is reading.

當然，我們很難估算大多數會議實現的成果，但VoloMetrix研究了會議期間與會者執行多重任務的情況。公司CEO萊恩o富勒說：“衡量效率的方式之一是計算每一位與會者發送的電子郵件數量，”因爲發送電子郵件和短信“表明與會者沒有100%參與討論，或許因爲他們根本不需要參加會議。”VoloMetrix的數據顯示，在開會期間，每一位與會者平均每30分鐘至少發送三封電子郵件。而且，這個數據還沒有統計與會者收到的信息。

“People often don’t think that each hour of someone’s time has a dollar value, and that there is a real cost to every meeting,” Fuller observes. “Companies could be much more productive and profitable if everyone were just a bit more aware and intentional about it.” He suggests four ways to cut meetings down to size.

富勒說：“人們往往不認爲一個人的時間有金錢價值，或者會議會有實際成本。但如果每個人都能更清楚和更關注時間的價值，一家公司就會提高效率，盈利能力也會大幅提升。”他提出了減少會議的四種方式。

Limit redundant managers.“If there are more than two levels of management from the same department or function, it’s a sign that some people are just listening,” Fuller notes. “They’re not part of the decision-making process. So do they really need to drop what they’re doing to be there?” He notes that, in many companies, someone sends out a detailed memo afterward about what happened in the meeting anyway, “even to the people who were present,” and “anyone who just needs to stay informed can read that when they have a minute.”

限制多餘的管理者出席。富勒說：“如果同一部門或職能單位內，有兩個以上的管理級別，這意味着有些人只是在聽命行事。他們不參與決策過程。因此，真的有必要讓他們放下手頭的工作去出席會議嗎？”他注意到，許多公司會在會議結束後發放會議記錄，其中會詳細說明會議的具體情況，“發放對象甚至包括出席過會議的人”，“那些只需要知曉情況的員工可以等到有時間的時候再去閱讀會議記錄。”

Establish a meeting time budget.“Add up the total number of hours that you and your team spend in meetings every week, and then aim to reduce that time by 10% or 20%,” Fuller suggests. “It forces you to really think about which meetings you could cut out altogether.” Some VoloMetrix clients have taken what Fuller calls “extreme measures” to enforce time limits, like using conference lines that cut off at a preset time, or conference room doors that lock at the precise moment a meeting begins, so that latecomers are shut out. “You usually don’t need to go that far” to keep the time suck to a minimum, he says. “Just keep reminding people who stretch the limits that they need to do better next time.”

制定會議時間預算。富勒建議：“計算出整個團隊每週花在開會上的時間總和，之後有針對性地把這個時間縮減10%或20%。這會迫使你認真考慮哪些會議可以取消。”VoloMetrix的一些客戶採取了富勒所謂的“極端措施”，強制執行時間限制。例如：使用在預定時間斷開的會議專線，或在會議開始的精確時刻關閉會議室大門，禁止遲到者進入。他說：“通常情況下，大家不需要採取那麼極端的方式”，將時間限制到最少。“你只要提醒那些不遵守時間的人，下次他們應該做得更好。”

Avoid time fragmentation.At lots of companies, meetings are scheduled with 30 or 60-minute blocks of time between them, but Fuller points to reams of research showing that it takes people at least 15 minutes to regain focus after an interruption, and “it’s difficult to be productive when you have less than an hour until your next meeting.” Whenever possible, he suggests, schedule meetings back-to-back, so that everyone gets a big block of uninterrupted time each day to concentrate on their actual work.

避免時間碎片化。許多公司會間隔30或60分鐘安排會議，但富勒指出，大量研究顯示，人在被打斷之後至少需要15分鐘時間才能重新集中精神，“如果在下一次會議之前的時間不足一個小時，那就很難保持高效率。”他建議，儘可能安排連續會議，使得每個人每天都能有一大段不被打擾的時間，集中做好自己的實際工作。

Require authorization.“Time spent in meetings really gets out of control because, in most companies, no one is counting,” Fuller says. “There’s no one deciding how much meeting time is really necessary.” To fix that, some VoloMetrix clients have made time budgeting part of financial budgets. “At the start of each new product-development cycle or other kind of project, the person in charge sets a meeting budget as part of the total cost,” Fuller says. “And it has to go through the same approval process.” He adds that some managers resist this at first—until they do the math. At one large biotech company, the chief financial officer “was expecting his large staff of highly paid people to spend a total of 60,000 hours a year in meetings, and he got annoyed at being told he had to cut that down,” Fuller says. “Then he saw the figures on what all those hours actually cost the company in dollars, and he changed his mind.”

實行審批。富勒說：“用於開會的時間之所以失去控制，是因爲在大多數公司，沒有人負責統計時間。沒有人決定必要的會議時長。”爲了解決這個問題，VoloMetrix的一些客戶將時間預算納入了財政預算。富勒說：“在每一個新的研發週期或其他類型的項目開始時，負責人都要設定會議預算，把它作爲總體開支的一部分。會議預算需要經過同樣的審批過程。”他補充道，有些管理人員最初懷有牴觸心理，但親自做過計算之後就會轉變態度。富勒表示，在一家大型生物科技公司，首席財務官“預計公司高薪聘請的大量員工每年用於開會的時間總計爲60,000個小時。在被告知需要削減開會時間時，他非常生氣。後來，他親眼看到了計算數據，瞭解了用於開會的時間將給公司造成的實際損失。於是，他改變了自己的想法。”