How work feels
Meeting effectiveness survey
Six questions about the quality of your meetings. If the complaint is that there are too many, start with the meeting load survey instead.
Opens this survey in Gists as a draft you can edit. Sign in with Slack, Google or your work email. 30 days free. No card needed.
The survey
How often do your meetings have a clear agenda shared in advance?
1 = almost never, 5 = almost always
How often do meetings end with clear next steps?
1 = almost never, 5 = almost always
In the past week, did you attend a meeting where you did not need to be?
Yes or no
Overall, how useful are the meetings you attend?
1 = rarely useful, 5 = almost always useful
Which habits would most improve our meetings?
Pick any, optional
- Share an agenda beforehand
- Invite fewer people
- Start and end on time
- Write down decisions
- Make some meetings shorter
- Replace some with written updates
- Things are working well
What makes your best meeting work well?
Written answer, optional
We wrote these questions for this survey and they are not a validated scale. You can edit them once the survey opens in Gists. If you copy them into another tool, check what it records about who answered.
Agendas have the best evidence
Leach, Rogelberg, Warr and Burnfield surveyed 958 people about their meetings in a typical week and 292 about their most recent one. Agenda use and the quality of the room stood out among the design features linked to how effective a meeting felt. Attendee involvement carried much of the effect, and bigger meetings had less of it (Leach et al., 2009). All of that is perceived effectiveness, the same thing this survey measures. Whether your meetings make better decisions is a separate question.
If agendas are rare and usefulness is low, try requiring one on recurring meetings for a month and see what happens.
How effective people find their meetings had a strong, direct relationship with how they feel about their jobs, across two surveys of full-time employees (676 and 304 people) (Rogelberg et al., 2006).
Load or quality?
The meeting load survey counts hours and asks which meetings to cut.
The decision it helps with
Which one meeting habit should you change first?
Running it
Quarterly, or before a reset. Someone able to change how meetings run has to own the result. These questions measure how useful meetings feel, which is different from whether they produce good decisions.
What the results might look like
These are made-up examples to show the patterns, not real data.
Few agendas, low usefulness
3 in 4 rate agendas 1 or 2, and usefulness averages 2.8.
- What it means
- Meetings run without a stated purpose.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't prove agendas will fix it. The link in the research is with how effective meetings feel.
- What to do
- Require an agenda on recurring meetings for a month.
People at meetings they didn't need
60% “Yes” on question 3.
- What it means
- Many see these invitations as too broad.
- What it doesn't mean
- It doesn't say those meetings are bad.
- What to do
- Make optional attendance normal and publish notes.
What to tell people afterwards
Tell people which habit you're trying, for how long, and how you'll tell if it worked.
What to measure next, and when
Ask the same questions a quarter later.
Reading it by team
Results show only when 5 or more people answer. A team below 5 rolls up into the team above it. A group is also held back when comparing it with another group could reveal a small team. HR and named leaders see every team with 5 or more answers. Each manager sees only their own team. Employees see no team scores. Themes only by default. Word-for-word answers are a company setting, off unless turned on, and employees see a notice before they write.
Related
Sources
- Leach, D. J., Rogelberg, S. G., Warr, P. B., Burnfield, J. L. (2009). Perceived Meeting Effectiveness: The Role of Design Characteristics. Journal of Business and Psychology, 24, 65-76. doi:10.1007/s10869-009-9092-6
- Rogelberg, S. G., Leach, D. J., Warr, P. B., Burnfield, J. L. (2006). "Not Another Meeting!" Are Meeting Time Demands Related to Employee Well-Being?. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 83-96. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.91.1.83