Imagine not having a single work meeting for a whole month. Imagine that happening organization-wide. One company that doesn't have to imagine that is TechSmith Corporation, whose workforce went meeting free for an entire month.
The screen-capture software provider held the 31-day experiment last year as a way to determine whether solely asynchronous communication—individuals working together on their own schedules—would have a positive impact on employee satisfaction, attitude, productivity, and innovation across its 300-employee base.
"As a 30-year leader in productivity and workplace communication solutions, we feel it is our responsibility to push the envelope and seek new ways for workers to efficiently and effectively connect and collaborate with each other," says TechSmith CEO Wendy Hamilton.
The idea came after the company realized employees were experiencing virtual meeting fatigue, prompting leaders to seek out more effective solutions for the workforce. The response shows TechSmith may have found that solution.
After the experiment ended, 85 percent of employees said they would consider replacing future meetings. While that indicates a willingness to go in a new direction, there was an 8 percent increase in the perceived importance of meetings from the beginning of the experiment to the end. On a scale of one to five, the average meeting score jumped from 3.32 to 3.57 by the end of the meeting-free month.
"Technology is obviously crucial for companies to function in a hybrid or remote setting, but real change must begin with a cultural reboot to help employees form new habits and workflows that are more conducive to their changing environment," Hamilton says. "This experiment was a great step towards building our ideal hybrid work culture."
