Why do we have so many meetings?

The study provides the first large-scale economic analysis of workplace meetings, using an original survey of over 9,000 Norwegian workers linked to matched employer-employee administrative records. Meetings are shown to be pervasive and costly, accounting for about 12 percent of work hours and 14 percent of firm wage bills. Most meeting time is devoted to planning, problem solving, information sharing, and project coordination. High-paying and high-revenue firms spend more on meetings despite higher opportunity costs of employee time, indicating meetings are a deliberate firm-level investment rather than mere time waste.

Meeting frequency and intensity are positively associated with worker wage growth: employees in meeting-intensive firms report more on-the-job learning, and meetings that involve interaction with more senior colleagues correlate with larger wage gains. Those patterns point to knowledge transmission and skill diffusion within firms as the primary mechanism through which meetings raise productivity and pay. The findings present meetings as an unpopular but productive workplace institution - costly in time and wages, yet linked to learning and career returns.