myGrilloCOM | Shopify is Killing Boring Work Meetings

TheStreet

This move could begin to clear our overloaded brains and make room for more creativity.

In my 15+ years as a journalist, there has been one thing that every colleague I’ve ever worked with has had more or less the same reaction to: big meetings.

The more meetings a person has, the unhappier they seem. One ex-boss of mine had a cross-stitched sign hanging up next to her desk that simply said, “I survived another meeting that could have been an email.”

Compound this eternal dislike with the mental numbness of a pandemic that forced folks to have all their meetings via video screen — a phenomenon nicknamed “Zoom fatigue” — and it’s hardly a surprise that people are less able to pay attention at work than ever before.

C-Suite employees perhaps have the worst of it, often being booked in back-to-back meetings for 10 hours or more. Despite scientific data proving that people’s attention spans deteriorate after 30 minutes in meetings, eventually lowering overall cognitive function, businesses continue to book them, often with little to no rest time in between (even though it’s also been proven that the breaks are crucial for mental health).

Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

How Shopify Is Changing Meeting Culture

In an internal memo to employees sent on January 3, Shopify CEO Kaz Nejatian announced that all previously scheduled recurring work meetings with three or more people would be removed from their calendars, and a two-week “cooling off” period would be enforced before any meetings could be scheduled.

Nejatian also announced that meeting-free Wednesdays would be reinstated and large meetings (50 people or more) would be limited to a six-hour window on Thursdays. The deleted meetings clear up more than 76,500 hours from employee work calendars.

This is one of several changes Shopify has made since announcing layoffs in July 2022, which affected 10% of its workforce. The commerce platform also just launched Commerce Components, offering a stack for online retailers that grants access to Shopify’s component structure.

Why This Matters So Much

While more and more companies are mobilizing toward providing employee support for mental healthcare or launching their own programs to help their ranks stay sane, often everyday things that can chip away at people’s mental health, like too many meetings, are overlooked.

While it’s less unusual these days for independent companies to adapt models like the four-day workweek to help employees avoid burnout, most large companies have not tried it (Panasonic being an exception).

With more than 16,000 employees, Shopify’s move has the power to send ripples across the industry and change what people expect from the workplace. And as one of those employees that has been through countless meetings over the years that, as my old boss clearly believed, “could have been an email,” I can say that I am looking forward to that change.

Meetings with one or two people, or even a small cluster, can be powerful as long as everyone in the room is able to connect on a genuine level. But add dozens or hundreds to that, and it’s simply impossible for each person to be heard — which can contribute to feelings of being unimportant, just a cog in a bigger machine, or even to “quiet quitting.”

So while it’s easy to demonize meetings and say we should get rid of them entirely, I don’t believe meetings are truly the problem. But if the ones that are scheduled are intentional and well thought out, both bosses and employees could feel better about being a part of them — not to mention a lot less bored.