Whether you want to admit it or not, throughout our working lives, many of us have bent the rules when it comes to business meetings.

Our analysis of over 2500 meetings, conducted via our Synergy SKY CONNECT software, identified suspicious meeting behavior and repeated patterns of no-show meetings. By leveraging data from Cisco Webex Room Series and other IoT room sensors,  CONNECT can detect no-show meetings, which subsequently exposes inefficiencies in meeting room booking procedures.

These repeated bookings of no-show meetings raise the question as to why 10% of workers have admitted that they have booked fake meetings in their calendar to appear busier at work or to skive off.

30% of booked meetings result in no-shows
46% of meetings end 30 minutes before their allocated time

Our data shows that this could be a prevalent issue across whole organizations. With 30% of booked meetings resulting in no-shows, and 46% of meetings ending 30 minutes before their allocated time, valuable meeting room space is being used inefficiently.

Where the cost of commercial real estate is high, businesses must implement ways to make the use of all space more efficient. Many organizations will tell you that they don’t have enough meeting room space, that meeting rooms are never available, and are therefore considering upsizing or relocating.

Before making this momentous decision, businesses should conduct a thorough analysis of meeting room usage to determine how they can maximize the space they already have. If 30% of booked meetings are in fact no-shows, businesses could have access to available meeting room space right on their own doorstep.

There are huge impacts that affect business and cash flow, namely the cost of wages and commercial real estate. Adding time-wasting and worker productivity to this growing list makes the efficient use of expensive meetings all the more important for businesses.

However, the “Internet of Things” is enabling ways of connecting devices and data like never before and the people using these devices are part of that data set. That said, our Management Suite does not actually flag this potentially suspicious behavior to administrators due to privacy concerns some workers might have.

Our systems are instead built to monitor efficient usage of business facilities and equipment with the goal of allowing employers to better optimize the extremely expensive real estate that is provided expressly for meetings. If we can help employers cut down on wasted resources and increase productivity, then we achieve our goals. 

 

This is what you can measure with Synergy SKY in meeting rooms: 

  • No-show

  • Actual start time

  • Actual end time

  • People count (also vs seats)

Turn these insights into actions:

  • Email notification to organizer or admin on your pre-configured deviations

  • Auto room release on no-show (configurable rule settings)

  • Reports; no-show, late show, early end vs booked time, people vs seats, etc

  • Set policies

The need for fast, seamlessly integrated, and accountable communications is often a concern that’s only prioritized once businesses start requiring a significant time spent on multi-person conference calls. Our software allows complete transparency into the what, when, where and who of meetings and it is this insight that’s allowed us to spot these repeated and somewhat suspect trends.

Meetings are one of the biggest issues businesses have. Lots of people hate them, lots of people don’t want to be in them and you can’t read a business publication without seeing a dozen articles on how to be more efficient in them. They are a key and necessary part of business life, that’s an inescapable fact.

Finally if you want to calculate the cost of time wasted - we created this Waste of Time calculator where you can calculate your wasted time and money. 

How to detect fake meetings       Get a free demo


Vemun Waksvik

Written by Vemun Waksvik

Video Veteran

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