• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, May 12, 2009

According to a new international study from Doodle, by research group LMRMC, business professionals spend 4.9 hours of an average workweek to arrange, on average, seven meetings. And, traditional means for meeting coordination dominate the situation in today's businesses: email, electronic calendars and meeting requests, telephone and online calendars. Except for holidays, says the report, that's 230 hours spent arranging meetings, not attending them, or 29 working days, nearly six working weeks a year.

Overall findings from 2,500 administrative and management staff from UK, US, France, Germany and the Nordic region were:

Meetings And Planning
Number of meetings arranged	7.1 meetings per week
Average time spent arranging meetings	4.9 h per week
Percentage of meetings rearranged	17%
Average meeting duration	2 3/4 hours
Average number of participants in the meetings	7
Source: Doodle, May 2009

Email remains the most common way to organize meetings for both managers and administrative professionals, closely followed by calendar systems. The practice of arranging meetings via online calendars, such as Google Calendar or Yahoo! Calendar, represents a significant share. However, professionals using these calendars declared to spend the same average time for scheduling each week as professionals using other means.

Most Popular Tools to Schedule Meetings (% of Respondents)
Tool	Administrative Staff	Managers
email	30%	34%
Calendars	34	27
Phone	14	14
Online calendars	21	22
Source: Doodle, May 2009

The survey found that face-to-face meetings are less important than expected, possibly due to increased pressure on our time, and the ease presented by modern technologies to create effective meetings either by phone, video or Web.

Types Of Meetings Arranged In The Week Prior To Questioning (% of Respondents)
Meeting Type	% of Respondents
Face to Face	26%
Conference calls	24
Web based meetings	29
Private meetings	11
Source: Doodle, May 2009

The average length of a meeting is two hours and 45 minutes, with a fifth of meetings lasting much longer at four to five hours. Managers tend to organize seven meetings a week, and attend meetings they arranged. This means they spend at least 19 hours and 15 minutes, almost half their official working week, in meetings.

The study found that managers are more likely to use the phone to arrange meetings, and, when managers organize meetings, they are more likely to be rearranged.

Medium-sized companies are more efficient at sticking to agreed times for meetings than small or large companies, says the report. While one in every six meetings overall needs to be rearranged, medium sized companies find they only need to reorganize an eighth of their meetings - and large companies tend to rearrange almost twice as many meetings.

Survey summary:

• Business professionals organize seven meetings a week on average, with the mean length of each being two hours 45 minutes
• Most meetings have at least four or five participants
• Across Europe and the US, administrative staff use calendar systems (34%) more than managers (27%)
• 34% of managers prefer email to arrange meetings vs. 30% of the administrative staff
• Managers typically need to rearrange more meetings than their assistants, with 69% of managers needing to reschedule get-togethers compared with 46% of administrative arrangements.

For additional information, please visit Doodle here.