Work meetings: what's the ideal time?

Morning or afternoon team meetings?

The results of Klaxoon's "Meetings in USA" survey leave no doubt in our minds: ideally, meetings should be held in the  morning rather than the afternoon.‍

73.6% of the professionals we questioned feel that the most productive meetings take place before 1pm.

Afternoons aren't popular, with extremely low results whatever the time slot. For example, only 1% of those surveyed feel that work meetings held between 4pm and 5pm are effective. After this, only 0.60% of people feel that the 5pm to 6pm slot is a good one.

So what's the explanation for this trend, which was expressed across every age, gender and activity, and regardless of the size of the organisation? It's not so easy to be sure, given that 6.3% of people said that the meeting time didn't matter.It would be reasonable to think that if afternoons aren't popular its because of a combination of different factors: lunch is still going down, unexpected events need to be managed, personal concerns which appear as the end of the day approaches and so on. And of course we mustn't forget the "peak drowsiness period", which many scientific studies set between 2pm and 4pm and which creates a steady loss in concentration!

9am - 10am: the ideal time slot for productive meetings!

While mornings appear to be the most appropriate time, make sure you don't just set your meeting at just any time.Teams clearly feel that the most productive meetings take place between 9am and 10am.25.7% of all professional classes voted for this time. This preference is even stronger in the human resources (35.7%) and research (36%) sectors.

If you want a productive work meeting, should you always have it between 9 and 10am?

The figures from the survey Klaxoon carried out in the United States are identical to the figures from the French surveys on the same topic (the Bird Office “Meeting room reservation platform" survey in 2015 or the Cadréo survey in 2017).

But we are not rushing to any conclusions!  A meeting which is set for the afternoon may still be effective if other conditions for success are met. If you need to set a meeting for a difficult time slot, don't forget to get your team to contribute, for example by using collaborative tools (quiz, survey, vote, etc.) to grab their attention from the start and hold it until the end.Finally, each team is different and moves forward at their own pace.

So, if you want to set the ideal time slot for your team, why not ask them to decide themselves? A quick brainstorming session on this question will enable you to make a quick decision while getting feedback from your staff.