- When it comes to setting up an important meeting at work, timing matters.
- Business Insider recently got ahold of an exclusive report from Doodle, an online scheduling platform, that analyzed nearly 200,000 meetings in 135 US territories to understand which times of day were the best to meet with coworkers.
- The report identified the exact times American workers prefer to have meetings based on which city they live in.
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Unproductive meetings can waste your time — and money.
A third of the 11 million meetings that take place every day are unproductive, according to a research in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. If you add up the time employees spend on meetings each day, the cost would come down to about $37 billion lost each year due to ineffective meetings, the study found.
Figuring out the best time to meet with your employees is hard. Your goal is to pick a time when people are the most likely to attend and engage.
Doodle, an online scheduling platform that's used by more than 30 million users each month, shared a new report exclusively with Business Insider that analyzed almost 200,000 meetings across 135 US territories. Using its own internal meeting data, the company found that the preferred time for meetings depends on where your office is located.
"I believe that picking the right time increases productivity, but sometimes, picking the right time with the right person is also important," said Renato Profico, CEO of Doodle. "You have people who work better in the evening than in the morning. It all depends on the employees and how they work."
Profico further explained that there are many components to setting up a perfect meeting time. The context of the discussion, the amount of people attending, other meetings that are also occurring that day — these are all things that managers should take into consideration before sending their calendar invites.
Here are the best times to have meetings based on the city you live in.
Americans don't like morning meetings
You should wait till the coffee kicks in before starting the meeting.
Doodle's report found that morning meetings are the least favorable option for employees, especially in major cities like New York and Boston. Small businesses in Western regions — like Cheyenne, Wyoming and Mankato, Minnesota — are most likely to choose breakfast discussions over other times of the day.
In short, you shouldn't schedule important meetings between 8 and 10 a.m. when people are still getting to the office. If you're going to schedule something before noon, do it when your colleagues are more settled in at their desks.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for example, has always scheduled his "high IQ" meetings between 10 a.m. and noon. Any issue that comes up later in the afternoon is then pushed back to the next day, Business insider previously reported.
Southerners prefer lunch meetings
Some people take their lunch hour to relax, others use it to talk business.
Of the 135 US territories analyzed, Doodle found that Southern offices have the highest interest in lunch meetings, as 71% of employees in Savannah, Georgia, and 69% in Waco, Texas, showed the most interest in meetings during afternoon hours.
This suggests that these employees prefer to handle meetings face-to-face rather than virtually, and they also see lunch get togethers as a normal part of the workday.
Employees in major cities prefer dinner meetings and after hours
In major cities, meetings are held during off-peak times.
According to the Doodle report, about 69% of New York employees said they prefer dinner meetings, while more than 50% of workers in San Francisco, Boston, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago all shared that they have a habit of discussing business plans after the 9-to-5 work day.
The possible explanation for this pattern is that people living in major cities work at a faster pace and are faced with more urgent matters everyday, Profico said. Meeting in the evening allows them to better focus on the actual meetup.
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