Shopify's cure for too many meetings: putting a $1,600 price tag on them

By Weston Blasi

Shopify has begun telling employees how much meetings cost the company, because 'time is money'

Shopify Inc. (SHOP.T) believes that too many meetings are taking over the workplace, so it's begun showing workers just how much money their meetings are costing the company.

Shopify debuted its internal meeting cost calculator on Wednesday, part of the company's efforts to decrease the meetings-clutter on people's calendars. The calculator, built as a Google (GOOGL) Chrome extension, shows Shopify employees the estimated cost of their meeting to the company, using factors like the meeting's length, the number of attendees and compensation data based on job position.

"The average size of a meeting at Shopify includes three people, and the average length of a meeting is about 30 minutes," Shopify told MarketWatch. "A typical meeting of this size and length would cost between $700-$1600."

Plus, that cost would go up if the number of attendees increased, and/or the meeting included higher-level executives.

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Shopify Chief Executive Kaz Netajian gave a demonstration of the tool to CBS in April.

Shopify is hoping that this tool may make employees think twice about scheduling a meeting, unless it's extremely necessary.

"People ask questions: what is this meeting for? Why are this many people in it? And those questions will put an immense amount of pressure on organizers to organize fewer meetings -- and leave the rest of us alone," Netajian said.

The introduction of the calculator is the latest move by Shopify to curb company meetings. The company said it began axing all recurring meetings, and it eliminated Wednesday meetings to give workers a meetings-free day each week, at the start of 2023.

"No one at Shopify would expense a $500 dinner," Nejatian recently said in an interview. "But lots and lots of people spend way more than that in meetings without ever making a decision. The goal of this thing is to show you that time is money. If you have to spend it, you think about it."

See also: 3 innovations that could revolutionize work meetings

In fact, unnecessary meetings could cost larger companies an estimated $100 million annually, according to a 2022 report produced for Otter.ai, which transcribes conversations for meetings and other events, by UNC Charlotte professor Steven G. Rogelberg. The survey, which took 632 responses from employees in various industries, stated that office workers have 17.7 meetings (totaling 18 hours) per week on average -- and the time spent in meetings and the frequency of meetings tend to increase as management level increases, with some exceptions.

Many workers are spending more and more time in meetings these days, as the number of overall meetings at work is up from pre-pandemic levels. One study revealed that people attend 13% more meetings today than before the COVID pandemic, with many of them occurring online.

Some companies, including tech giant Microsoft (MSFT), have seen the total number of meetings increase much more at their workplace.

"Meetings are still consuming a lion's share of our time. Since February 2020, the average Teams user saw a 252% increase in their weekly meeting time, and the number of weekly meetings has increased 153%," the company said in 2022.

Much of the increase in meetings may be linked to the higher proportion of employees working remotely, as these types of meetings have became more frequent, one Harvard Business Review study suggests. They found that there were 60% more remote meetings per employee in 2022 compared to 2020, or five to eight more meetings per week per employee, on average.

Many workers agree that there are too many workplace meetings, and surveys show they felt that way even before the pandemic meeting boom.

According to a 2019 poll of 1,945 workers by organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry, 67% of workers said excessive meetings kept them from getting their best work done.

"Too often, the answer to any work issue is 'let's meet.' While collaboration is absolutely what drives innovation and success in today's global marketplace, it's time to get creative with how we use our time together," said Korn Ferry Senior Client Partner Cathi Rittelmann. "Meetings aren't necessarily bad, but the way we prep and lead them can sometimes derail productivity. The bottom line is this: clear objectives, an agenda and identified roles never go out of style."

Shares of Shopify rose 6.72% during Thursday's trading, and are up 102% year-to-date.

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-Weston Blasi

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07-15-23 1241ET

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