By Jonathan Justus | jonnynow.com | 28 June 2026
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash
We have quietly accepted that meetings are where work goes to die — and a new study has put a price on the funeral. Jabra's Cost of Bad Meetings Report, published in June 2026, found that 58% of the average employee's meeting time is now seen as unnecessary: the equivalent of a full working month lost every year, per person. For large organisations, the firm estimates the drain at as much as $130 million annually. The survey, conducted by Toluna across more than 2,300 knowledge workers in seven markets, is not describing the occasional dull catch-up. It is describing how most of us spend our working days.
This is not a new complaint, but it is a stubborn one. A widely cited Harvard Business Review survey of 182 senior managers found that 71% considered meetings unproductive and inefficient. Nearly a decade of new collaboration tools later, the figure has not improved — Jabra reports that 87% of employees now admit to a sense of "meeting dread" before they even join. The technology changed. The communication did not.
The real cost lands after the meeting ends
The most expensive part of a bad meeting is rarely the hour itself; it is everything that hour fails to settle. Jabra found that nearly six in ten meetings require follow-up discussions or extra work simply to clarify what was decided and who does what next. The report gives this a name: "meeting debt" — the duplicated effort, repeated alignment and chasing messages that pile up because the original conversation never reached a clear outcome. A meeting that ends in ambiguity has not saved time. It has merely deferred the work, with interest. Clarity is not a nicety you add at the end; it is the entire point, and the discipline of stating decisions plainly before anyone leaves is one most teams never practise.
Why being heard is a skill, not a setting
Much of the meetings industry wants to sell you a fix made of hardware and software. Yet the same study shows that better kit only goes so far. Around half of remote participants report feeling forgotten, talked over or excluded, and 42% of workers say they hit their energy limit within two hours of back-to-back meetings. Once that cognitive ceiling is reached, contributions thin out and the quietest, often most useful, voices drop away entirely. No microphone solves that. Drawing people in, noticing who has not spoken, summarising what you heard before you respond — these are communication habits a capable chair builds deliberately. An organisation that treats inclusion as an audio problem will keep paying for it as a productivity one.
Key statistic: 87% of employees report a degree of "meeting dread" before joining a meeting. (Jabra Cost of Bad Meetings Report, 2026)
The habits that reclaim the room
The good news is that the fixes are behavioural and free. Refuse the reflexive "yes" to every invitation; if you cannot see why you are needed or what will be decided, ask before you accept. Send an agenda that names a decision, not a topic. Open by stating the single outcome the meeting exists to reach, and close by reading the decisions and owners aloud so no one leaves guessing. Protect the last-to-speak. And recognise that brevity is a courtesy: the colleague who can make a point in two clear sentences gives everyone else their afternoon back. None of this requires permission or budget — only the choice to treat the meeting as a piece of communication to be done well rather than an obligation to be endured.
Master Professional Communication with Elevana
Meetings are simply communication with witnesses — and the people who run them well are not louder, they are clearer. Elevana's PRO Communicator programme builds exactly the habits this study exposes as missing: framing a conversation around a decision, listening so that others feel heard, and saying more with fewer words. If your calendar is full but your outcomes are not, the gap is rarely the agenda. It is the skill in the room.
A meeting is not time you spend together; it is a decision you owe each other. Make it, and let everyone go.
