When you’re the first one on a conference call because other meeting participants are struggling to connect, what do you do?
You're likely trying to burn time while the others work through their technical difficulties. Not only is this frustrating, it's also costing your company in productivity, taking you and everybody else away from their work.
Unfortunately, connectivity issues happen all too often, taking two-thirds of business professionals away from their work on a regular basis. These disruptions happen most often when employees try to share content and screens. And, not only does this throw schedules into disarray, these technical difficulties also cause a great deal of stress.
Barco, a global technology company, reported that 90 percent of "office workers experience seriously elevated stress levels" due to technical difficulties during meetings, costing businesses in more ways than one.
When companies talk about meeting delays, they generally talk about the hard costs because the bottom line is important.
If you’re left waiting 5 minutes twice a week for 50 weeks of the year (hopefully you get at least two weeks of vacation), that adds up to more than 8 hours -- an entire workday.
Granted, it’s just a work day, so you wouldn’t have spent that time surfing in Hawaii or exploring Paris anyway. But still, what could you have done with that day? Completed that training? Finished an important project?
What seems like a short period of wait time can turn out to be a big loss for you and the company you work for.
If you want to measure the cost of meeting delays in terms of money, you can calculate the loss in dollars by measuring time wasted by pay rate by the number of participants.
Then, you can compare that to the cost of purchasing easier-to-use technology solutions. You’ll likely find that it makes more sense to invest in collaboration solutions.
Once you do, you’ll also gain peace of mind knowing you're no longer wasting that expensive, precious company time.