‘Dragging on meetings longer than they need to be’, ‘interrupting’ and ‘ignoring others’ have been identified by those surveyed as the three most annoying online meeting behaviours in a survey of 1,016 office workers.

Research commissioned by Meeting Canary – a SaaS cloud-hosted product that delivers insights and efficiency for online meetings, using artificial intelligence – and carried out by Censuswide, discovered a shocking one-third of office workers surveyed said they have considered leaving or have resigned from a job due to unproductive meetings in the past, rising to almost one in two Gen Zs.

The report uncovered generational differences in which behaviours most likely create an unproductive meeting environment. While Gen Zs surveyed ranked ‘ignoring others’ (75 per cent), ‘interrupting’ (73 per cent), and ‘discounting the opinions of others based on their gender, sex or race etc’ (70 per cent) as the top three most annoying behaviours, baby boomers surveyed cited ‘People who drag meetings on longer than they need to be’ (84 per cent), ‘interrupting’ (79 per cent) and ‘arriving late’ (79 per cent).

Lateness was a particular issue that divided the generations. When asked, “As a general rule, by how many minutes, if any, do you think it's acceptable to arrive at a work meeting after the agreed time before it is considered late?” 70 per cent of baby boomers surveyed said ‘no time – if you arrive after the agreed time at all then you are late’. Only 22 per cent of Gen Zs surveyed said the same.

Almost one in two Gen Zs surveyed (47 per cent) said participants could arrive up to 5-10 minutes after the agreed time before they would consider them late.

Baby boomers were also more likely than Gen Zs to find ‘people who have their camera off’ annoying (54 per cent vs 31 per cent), ‘people talking when they’re on mute’ (63 per cent vs 50 per cent) and ‘using jargon’ (70 per cent vs 44 per cent).

The report uncovered widespread dissatisfaction with meetings among adults of all ages, with 58 per cent surveyed saying that a lot of meetings lack focus or energy. Almost six in 10 (57 per cent) also believe that a lot of the meetings they are in leave quieter staff members out.

“With just under three in five office workers who take part in online hybrid meetings at least once per week surveyed (59 per cent) telling us they feel like their company wastes a lot of time and money on meetings, it’s clear that the way the vast majority of companies hold meetings is broken,” said Laura van Beers, CEO & Founder of Meeting Canary.