Meeting Costs

Meetings cost money, but often it is difficult to quantify that cost. Workers often have to go through great lengths to expense a £30 book, but can freely create meetings with a large number of participants that could cost the company 100’s of pounds. Without being able to understand or visualise the cost it is too easier to make poor decisions.

How to calculate #

There are a few different ways to calculate the cost of a meeting. One way is to estimate the cost of the time that the participants spend in the meeting. If the participants are all employees, you can estimate their hourly salary and multiply that by the number of hours they spend in the meeting. If the participants are not employees, you can estimate their hourly rate and multiply that by the number of hours they spend in the meeting.

Another way to calculate the cost of a meeting is to estimate the cost of the resources that are used in the meeting. For example, if the meeting is held in a conference room, you can estimate the cost of the conference room rental. If the meeting uses any equipment, such as a projector or a microphone, you can estimate the cost of the equipment rental.

Finally, you can also calculate the cost of the opportunity cost of the time that is spent in the meeting. Opportunity cost is the cost of the next best thing that could have been done with the time that was spent in the meeting. For example, if the participants could have been working on a project instead of attending the meeting, you can estimate the cost of the project that was not completed.

The best way to calculate the cost of a meeting will vary depending on the specific meeting. However, by estimating the cost of the time, resources, and opportunity cost of the meeting, you can get a good idea of the overall cost of the meeting. Meeting Canary now prominently displays this real cost see Viewing Meeting Cost in Meeting Canary

One company decided to delete all regular occurring meetings to save their workers valuable time. It’s not just the time spent in the meeting, but the cognitive disruption to the workers flow and concentration.