Shopify's move to cut back on group time highlights need to combat overload
Recently, Canadian tech giant Shopify announced to staff it was temporarily cutting back on company meetings.
According to CBC News, the company felt that employees were being overloaded with a neverending stream of get-togethers, and it was time to fight back.
“Uninterrupted time is the most precious resource of a craftsperson, and we are giving our people a ‘no-judgment zone’ to subtract, reject meetings, and focus on what is most valuable,” said Kaz Nejatian, vice-president of product and COO at Shopify in Toronto, in an internal memo obtained by CBC.
Meetings with more than three persons and those held on Wednesdays were immediately terminated, which resulted in the freeing up of 76,500 hours for other work, according to the news report.
While beleaguered workers may be applauding the change, is it one that should be adopted by more companies?
“It’s a great time to take stock; determine what to pause, stop and eliminate to create space for the vital few,” says Tim Magwood, cofounder and partner of 1-DEGREE/Shift, a culture and leadership development agency in Toronto.
“What Tobias [Lutke] did at Shopify is a little bit unique because they just let a whole bunch of people go at the end of 2022.”
But the move provides the company with time to “recalibrate to the new capacity requirements, and hopefully it’s giving them some more time to breathe and to execute,” says Magwood, especially considering the state of its stock price.
Silent meetings, which begin with a short period of quiet reflection before launching into the discussion, are another less traditional approach, says an organizational science expert.
‘Focus Fridays’
While Shopify’s move may be making waves, it’s something that one HR software and service company has already tried with great success.
“Ceridian looked at it a little over a year ago,” says Michelle Bonam, vice-president of organizational effectiveness at Ceridian in Toronto.
“We did our own internal surveys, we put together some focus groups, we also looked at external employee sentiment along with external research and we identified that meeting overload is very real for people.”
The company implemented what it calls “Focus Fridays” in response to some of the new realities of today’s fragmented and frazzled workplaces, she says.
“People are compensating these days for the hallway conversation, the water cooler, the drive-by conversations by basically scheduling more meetings, and it’s cutting into employees’ ability to do heads-down work, so creating some space for people to do this important work is really crucial.”
Boost to culture
Instead of constantly scheduling meetings to compensate for a lack of culture, the opposite is happening, according to Magwood.
“As leaders, if we continue to add to people’s plates, we’re going to burn them out and that’s what you’re seeing: engagement levels continue to be down and wellbeing is down; productivity has been up until about a year ago.”
Leaders must engage in a delicate “dance” between providing culture, while continuing to expect excellent productivity, he says.
“What they’re doing at Shopify and companies like it — by reducing or limiting meetings to create more efficiency and productivity — is good, but we have to be intentional about how we can create connection and community.”
DEI must also be considered to make all employees feel valued at company meetings, says another expert.
Buy-in from leaders
While Ceridian received “incredibly positive sentiment from employees,” the same wasn’t necessarily true for managers, says Bonam.
“We were hearing from leaders who initially were concerned about not having meetings on that day,” she says.
“There was a lot of concern from leaders of just losing a day for having those internal meetings, just really feeling like, ‘Oh my god, what’s going to happen? We have these incredibly important meetings that have to occur.’”
Eventually, leaders aligned and “people really took a positive approach, and really started questioning what was truly important to get the business done,” says Bonam.
“They’re finding that some of the meetings were not essential, they weren’t important and so they were able to relook at meetings, and really eliminate some of the meetings altogether.”
Best practices for a good meeting
It’s not only a good idea to cut back on the number of meetings, but each one should be streamlined, says Bonam.
“A successful meeting has a clear purpose. Everybody who’s invited to the meeting has an action for that meeting or a deliverable tied to that meeting. So they have a reason to be there.”
As well, once that meeting has adjourned, it’s key to have “clear notes that are distributed to everyone so that everyone has a common understanding of what was agreed to in the meeting and comes out of the meeting,” she says.
One of the biggest mistakes meetings organizers often make is not being clear about the purpose of that event, according to Magwood.
“Is this a team meeting client update? Is this a financial conversation? Is this a decision around strategy? Is this ‘We’re brainstorming on client X’? For the purpose, we need to just even have a minute or two to say, ‘OK, here’s a bit of context.’”
Because many workers have been inundated with non-stop meetings, something as simple as adjusting the timing also worked wonders for Ceridian, says Bonam.
“Another thing we did was a reset in Outlook, where 30-minute meetings now default to 25 minutes, and even an hour or longer default to 10 minutes less, so that we build in break time for people because that was something that in this virtual and hybrid world, there was no break time between meetings — they were back-to-back.”
In the early “chaotic” days of the pandemic, one Vancouver employer quickly decided to implement “no-meeting Wednesdays.”
HR as coach and listener
For HR, it’s important to help meeting organizers to become better at holding these type of company events, says Magwood.
“Let’s be good coaches with our business leaders on how to help them prepare better, more effective and more efficient meetings. I think there’s lots of leaders who need help preparing for leading great meetings.”
And don’t forget to look inward, says Bonam.
“Listen to your employees because just putting ideas out there is one thing but if it’s not something that the employees are asking for, then at the end of the day, it may not move the dial on engagement. So, you’ve really got to hit that sweet spot, with it fitting in with your culture, being able to get leaders in line and it’s something that employees are looking for.”
