Just a feeling of many employees? No, unfortunately reality! It is a development that has taken place in recent years. This had already begun before the pandemic, but was extremely intensified by the pandemic.
Podcast on "SAP does "Focus Friday" without conferences": a model for the future?" by Stefan Eich, May 20, 2022, in conversation with Jutta Rump, Director of the Institute for Employment and Employability in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
At the moment, you get the feeling that you can no longer escape the meeting madness. One meeting follows the next. Here a workshop, there a meeting - modern video conferencing software lowers the threshold for a brief team discussion due to the simplicity of connecting the team online in a matter of seconds with just a few mouse clicks. In some cases, people don't even question the usefulness of such meetings anymore - that was different in the past. As a result, some employees no longer have time to perform their everyday tasks because they are so busy with meetings and discussions that they don't have the time.
The term "zoom fatigue" describes this cluttered meeting culture, coupled with a loss of productivity. Likewise, employee motivation drops. "Exchange is always good - but at the end of the day, the daily work routine must not only consist of exchange, because the operative daily business must also be handled." (Jutta Rump)
Focus Friday was created by SAP to enable precisely this day-to-day operational business to be conducted without disruptive meetings. Jutta Rump sees potential in this arrangement, but in today's world of fast-moving communication, she calls for a structured process of meetings with regulated time slots and binding rules.