A YouGov survey of 3,000 employees in France, Belgium and Spain for Comet Meetings finds that 86% of French employees still sit through meetings they consider pointless.
Behind the figure, strong employee expectations that remain unmet
In a first-of-its-kind survey, YouGov polled 3,000 European employees on behalf of Comet Meetings in the three countries where the company operates, France, Belgium and Spain, about their meeting practices. It is the first post-pandemic study devoted to the subject, covering both in-person and remote formats. It offers an overview of current practice in these three countries. While some traits are shared by the three management cultures surveyed, others reveal very different trends from one country to the next. In France, the question is whether meetings are useful at all, even though a large majority of employees want the way they are run to improve. Comet Meetings has become the specialist in corporate meetings, turning them into moments that deliver meaning, creativity and performance alike. In the light of this study, Comet notes that while the intention to bring teams together is clearly there, work on management and on meeting training is still needed, particularly in France.
“Meetings are a key moment in corporate life. This study shows that they have yet to reach their full potential, says Victor Carreau, CEO of Comet Meetings. We are ready to drive the future-of-work revolution that employees are calling for, as they want change in how useful team moments are and how often they happen. Part of our mission is also to make employers aware of the situation,” he concludes.
Meeting usefulness: the lingering symptom of French meeting overload
The surprise of the study is that time spent in meetings is not the sign of the famous meeting overload: it is rather the perceived usefulness of that time within the company that raises questions. Only 11% of respondents feel that all their meetings are very useful, with no difference between managers and the people they manage. 49% of French respondents spend less than 6 hours a week in meetings, and 40% say they never attend meetings with more than two people, which rules out time as the issue. In France, then, people would not meet too often, but they would meet badly, without giving that time its full purpose. Finding the place and the purpose of meetings in employees' daily working life, whether or not they hold a management role, is a genuine expectation: in France, close to 73% of the 1,003 respondents would like meetings to be better run in their company. Comet Meetings has made it its speciality to answer that expectation, with a turnkey offer combining outstanding venues, designed to make meetings and offsites succeed, with a range of services to prepare and run them well.
The purpose of meetings: uneven results, especially among younger employees
Going into a meeting knowing why you have been invited seems obvious. Yet the study reveals that in France, while most employees usually know why they are invited, junior and senior staff are not in the same boat. 82% of 18-24 year-olds always know why they are invited, compared with 99% of those over 55. In Spain and Belgium, that gap does not exist.
The question of purpose also arises in terms of managerial follow-up: while meetings are seen as the main moment for sharing and exchanging information between colleagues, 17% of managers say they do not hold meetings with more than two people, and 19%, largely the same profile, say they never hold one-to-one meetings. This trend is specific to France and shows there is still ground to cover to build and strengthen a genuine collective dynamic in companies.
Training to run a meeting: a solution and an expectation still unmet
While the time spent in meetings remains relatively high, that time is not yet used to build team cohesion, positive managerial impact and overall performance. Expectations, however, run high: asked “would you like your company to improve the way it runs meetings?”, a majority of respondents answer yes in all three countries, and especially in Spain (84%). In France, 73% would like to see it, among managers and non-managers alike. As for training in running meetings, the figures make the picture worse: 68% of employees in France have never been trained in meetings. Only 50% of managers have been trained at least once in their career. The situation is identical among our Belgian neighbours, while on the training front almost half of Spanish respondents (45%) have received such training. Notably, being a woman in France halves your chances of being trained in meetings: 23% of women against 40% of men.
For Victor Carreau, CEO of Comet Meetings: “Looking closely at the figures in this study, we see that 86% of respondents still face pointless meetings. That number is high, but it points to a need: companies must turn meetings into collective moments that allow people both to connect and to rally around the goals to be reached. To get there, employees need method and training. Comet Meetings exists to set its clients on the path to the meeting of tomorrow, and our venues as well as the services we offer there are geared to that aim. Our teams work on this challenge every day, which is why we recently brought in Florian Guillot as Meeting Evangelist, to take our expertise in this field even further.”
