Bosses should stop calling so many meetings that waste staff time.

That’s according to columnist with the Irish Independent Frank Coughlan.

“This is on the back of comments from Jamie Dimon, who is the top man at JP Morgan bank, to shareholders giving out about how staff behave at meetings,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.

“The real point is that his executives - like executives everywhere – call too many; they go on too long and they’re all about prevarication and distraction and often about power and ego and rarely get anything done.

“Sometimes I think they probably subtract from the sum total of human knowledge.”

Mr Coughlan said there are studies to back this thought up.

“There’s a number of studies – numerous, endless studies – from executives who were asked; this is one from the Harvard Business Review, saying they surveyed 182 senior managers,” he said.

“65 said meetings kept them from doing their own work and 70% said they were completely unproductive and inefficient.”

Business people using digital tablet in office meeting. Image: Tetra Images, LLC / Alamy. 6 June 2015

According to Mr Coughlan, lack of office space is no longer an excuse to cancel a meeting after online gatherings became the norm during COVID-19.

“I suppose there is some conciliation that you can sit in your shorts and slippers for resume and that takes some of the pain out of it,” he said.

“But generally, they just drain the life out of people, and they drain the life out of ideas and initiative as well."

Mr Coughlan said there are “too many [meetings], too often”.

Main image: Female boss leading corporate meeting. Image: Alamy