{"id":2647,"date":"2016-01-21T09:35:16","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T17:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2016-01-21T09:35:16","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T17:35:16","slug":"better-meetings-make-your-small-business-meetings-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/better-meetings-make-your-small-business-meetings-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Meetings: Make your small business meetings count"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Better<\/a><\/p>\n

When you are sitting in a small business meeting, do you ever wonder how many other people are doing just the same thing? Quite a few as it turns out. In the U.S. alone, there are 25 million formal meetings held each day. With today\u2019s technology, the good news is that not all of those meetings require that everyone sits around a conference table. Thanks to mobile devices and apps<\/a> and cloud computing<\/a>, you can initiate or be part of a meeting from just about anywhere, using a headset <\/a>when necessary to block out background noise so you can hear and be heard.<\/p>\n

However while technology may make it easy to get together from anywhere with colleagues or customers to brainstorm, strategize or just catch up on the status of a project, not all meetings result in progress or productivity. In fact, meetings are notorious for being poorly organized and poorly run. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that $37 billion is spent on unproductive meetings each year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only the meeting itself that takes time out of a busy week. It takes time to prepare, sometimes with pre meetings, and follow up. Plantronics recently conducted a global survey and found that over 40 percent of respondents spend between 11 and 30 or more hours a week in meetings.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that meetings can cost a lot of your small business time, so you want to be sure you need the meeting and that each one matters.<\/p>\n

Is an in-person meeting needed?<\/h5>\n

Since in-person meetings, in particular, take so much time, at Plantronics as part of our Better<\/em> Meetings<\/em> <\/a>initiative, we suggest reviewing a series of successive questions to determine if one is needed. They include:<\/p>\n