Productivity

Unnecessary Meetings Cost $25,000 per Employee a Year

The average employee sits in about 18 hours of meetings a week and calls almost six of them a waste. Priced out in salary, that's a five-figure line item nobody puts on a budget.

TRCR Research · Jul 15, 2026 · 6 min read
Illustration of a round meeting table seen from above, ringed by simple chairs, with a pie-slice wedge of the table lifting away and breaking into drifting fragments — a chunk of hours lost to meetings
$25,000wasted per employee every year on unnecessary meetings — the salary cost of the ~6 unproductive meeting-hours a week workers report (Rogelberg / Otter.ai, 2022)

Key takeaways

  • The average employee spends about 18 hours a week in meetings and reports nearly 6 of them as unproductive (Rogelberg, 632 workers across 20 industries).
  • Priced in salary, that wasted time runs to more than $25,000 per employee per year — roughly $100M a year at a 5,000-person company.
  • Workers say they don't need to be in 30% of the meetings they attend, yet 53% feel they can't decline.
  • You can't cut what you can't see: start by making meeting time a tracked, visible cost, then replace status meetings with async updates.

Meetings are the one big expense that never shows up on a budget. No one signs off on "spend $25,000 of this person's year sitting in rooms they didn't need to be in" — but that's roughly what the average company does, one recurring invite at a time.

The number comes from the most-cited study on the subject, and it lands higher than most owners expect.

$25,000wasted per employee per year on unnecessary meetings — the salary cost of the ~6 unproductive meeting-hours a week workers reportSource: Rogelberg / Otter.ai, The Cost of Unnecessary Meeting Attendance, 2022 (632 workers, 20 industries)

In a 2022 study of 632 workers across 20 industries, organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg had people audit their own calendars. The average employee attended 17.7 meetings and spent about 18 hours a week in them — but rated only 11.8 as worth attending. The roughly six unproductive hours, priced in salary and benefits, work out to more than $25,000 per person per year. At a 5,000-employee company that's about $100 million annually; even a 100-person shop burns around $2.5M.

Why this hits service businesses twice

For a firm that bills by the hour, a meeting carries two price tags. There's the salary cost Rogelberg measured — and there's the opportunity cost of an hour that could have been billable. An internal status meeting doesn't just cost what you pay the people in it; it quietly drags down utilization, the number agencies already struggle with. (See the average agency's 69% utilization.)

Run the math on a 10-person team at a $150 blended rate. If each person loses six hours a week to meetings they didn't need, that's 60 hours — about $9,000 of billable capacity a week, or roughly $450K a year that never reaches a client invoice, on top of the salary you already paid for the time.

It's not meetings — it's the wrong meetings

The problem isn't collaboration; it's default-invite culture. Rogelberg's respondents didn't need to be in 30% of their meetings, yet 53% said they still felt they couldn't say no. So they show up and cope: 70% admitted to multitasking through meetings they considered unnecessary — which just smears the productivity loss onto the work they're half-doing on the side.

30%of meetings attendees say they didn't need to be in — yet 53% still feel they can't decline the inviteSource: Rogelberg / Otter.ai, 2022

Zoom out and the pattern is decades old. Executives now spend about 23 hours a week in meetings, up from under 10 in the 1960s, and Harvard Business Review puts total US meeting spend at roughly $37 billion a year. Meeting load is the default that quietly expands until someone measures it.

How to cut the cost without cutting collaboration

  1. Make meeting time a tracked category. If internal meetings aren't logged, they're invisible — and invisible costs never get cut. Track them like any other time.
  2. Give every meeting a question, not a topic. If you can't write the question the meeting exists to answer, it can be an async update instead.
  3. Shrink the invite list. Default to the people whose participation changes the outcome; make attendance optional for everyone else.
  4. Replace status meetings with written updates. Most recurring syncs exist to share status — which a task board and a comment thread do better, on everyone's own schedule.
  5. Audit recurring invites quarterly. Standing meetings are where waste compounds; cancel the ones no one can justify in a sentence.

Where TRCR fits

TRCR won't run your meetings, but it removes the reason for a lot of them. Because time tracking, projects, and chat live in one place, meeting hours show up as a real, measurable cost next to billable work — so you can finally see what your calendar is actually spending. And because every task carries its own status, timeline, and comment thread, the standing "where are we?" sync becomes an async update people read when it suits them — not six hours a week they'll multitask through anyway.

Frequently asked questions

How much do unnecessary meetings cost per employee?

About $25,000 per employee per year, according to a 2022 study by organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg. The average worker spends roughly 18 hours a week in meetings and rates nearly six of them unproductive; priced in salary and benefits, that wasted time adds up to a five-figure annual cost per person.

How many hours a week do employees spend in meetings?

Around 18 hours a week for the average employee (about 17.7 meetings), but workers rate only roughly 11.8 of those as worth attending. Executives spend even more — about 23 hours a week, up from under 10 hours in the 1960s.

What percentage of meetings are unnecessary?

Employees say they don't need to be in about 30% of the meetings they attend, yet 53% feel they can't decline. Roughly a third of all meeting time is spent in gatherings the attendees themselves consider skippable.

How can a business reduce meeting costs?

Track meeting time so its cost is visible, give every meeting a specific question to answer, trim invite lists to people whose participation changes the outcome, and replace recurring status meetings with async written updates on a shared task board.

Sources

Figures are drawn from published industry research; treat them as directional and benchmark against your own numbers.

  1. Unnecessary meetings can cost big companies $100 million a year (reporting the 2022 Rogelberg / Otter.ai study) — CBS News / MoneyWatch
  2. The Cost of Unnecessary Meeting Attendance (full report) — Steven G. Rogelberg / Otter.ai
  3. Stop the Meeting Madness — Harvard Business Review (Perlow, Hadley & Eun, 2017)

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