smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Excessive amounts of meetings and poor time management is stifling the entrepreneurial flow say UK entrepreneurs. New research reveals that 42 per cent of UK business owners feel less than half the time they spend in meetings is valuable.

Based on the findings by Bibby Financial Services, the true cost of wasted time is over two million hours annually costing the UK small- and medium-sized business economy around £25 million a year.

The top factor that business owners and managers found most irritating about meetings was people not sticking to the agenda (22 per cent), followed closely by unprepared colleagues (15 per cent) and disruptions caused by intrusions and people using their mobile phones (11 per cent).

David Robertson, chief executive of Bibby, says: ‘Adding the wasted time spent in meetings to all the HR, financial and regulatory issues UK owners and managers have to deal with, it’s amazing they find the time to focus on their business at all.’

Accordingly, Bibby has offered these top tips to minimise the burden of wasted time:

- Stick to the agenda – circulate a proposed agenda a couple of days beforehand, allowing those who will be present to add their items. Once in the meeting, make it clear that any items not on the agenda will not be dealt with until the end, under the ‘any other business’ section. This will help to keep things moving during the meeting.

- Take minutes and monitor them – Go through the minutes at the end of the meeting to ensure clear objectives and deadlines have been set and understood. Ensure detailed minutes, including all actions, are circulated no more than 24 hours after the meeting.

- Don’t meet for meetings’ sake – Many new and cost-effective technologies now exist that allow telephone or web conferencing which can eliminate the need to travel to face to face meetings. Is it really essential you’re there in person?

- Ban the buzz – With Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones causing one of the biggest disruptions to meetings, introduce a ban on gadgetry and lead by example. To avoid missing important calls during longer meetings, give people five minutes to have a break and check their messages every hour or so.

By prioritising your time and business owners and managers will be able to cut down on the misery caused by ‘meeting mania’ and focus on the most important thing, the success of your business.

Click here for advice on handling interruptions.

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