Powwownow reveals more than a quarter (26%) of business people find more than half of the face-to-face meetings they attend a waste of time. The survey also reveals that a fifth (20%) resent the time wasted travelling to meetings, with almost half (45%) stating they get less work done on days they leave the office to attend a meeting. To add fuel to the flames, more than one in ten (15%) frustrated employees are forced to work out of hours to make up for time spent out of the office.
Powwownow's Marketing Director, Robert Gorby, adds: "Meetings play an integral role in the business world, but the amount of time and money British businesses spend on pointless face-to-faces is staggering and unnecessary.
"At Powwownow, we are all about low-cost and reliability. Basically we just want to help businesses get things done. That's why it didn't come as a surprise in our poll that over a third (35%) of Brits claimed meetings put them under additional time pressure and a further third (35%) kept them from doing other impending work. Conference calls are a great example of a better way to cut corners, without impacting business output."
The survey finds that travel costs and time spent on the road and in face-to-face meetings cost UK companies a staggering £15,979 per head, every year. As a result, UK SME businesses are potentially wasting £637,000 per annum on meetings, which could be held via conference call.
Despite the most common modes of transport to meetings being by car (51%), taxi (26%), tube and train (33%) and bus (19%), the average UK SME is potentially spending over £510k on employees travel to meetings every year.
Nearly one in ten (9%) spend over £4,800 on travelling to meetings per year and while a majority take-on the commuter crush, some businesspeople have accepted a bit of luxury when travelling to meetings, opting for a boat (2%), private jet (1%), helicopter (1%), and even a hovercraft (1%).
The findings reveal Brits may be trying to pass the time in meetings with small talk, which amounts to forty-one hours per year, the equivalent of a full working week every year. Almost half (48%) admit to getting their own back by claiming non-work related expenses, like magazines and even alcohol.
When asked why they preferred conference calls to face-to-face meetings, three in ten (31%) said they were shorter and snappier than meetings held out of the office, with over a quarter (28%) of UK businesspeople claiming they were happy to avoid niggley niceties they experienced during face-to-face meetings. Those polled also added productivity as another reason why they liked conference calls, with three in ten (28%) saying they allowed them to save time and get on with other more important tasks.