A meeting invite pops up in your calendar. You know full well it’s going to be a complete waste of your time – you had this same meeting last week, and the week before, and it was completely pointless. You have so many other things to be doing, such better ways to spend this time. But will you skip the meeting? Nah. The risk of missing something feels too high. So despite knowing full well that this meeting has zero value to your working life, you go and sit through it in silence… and then do the same thing next week, and the week after, and the week after that. 

This is ‘meeting FOMO’, it’s super common, and it’s holding us back from doing our best work. In a report from Microsoft, workers said that ‘having inefficient meetings’ and ‘having too many meetings’ were in their top three (first and third place, respectively) obstacles to productivity. The same report found that only one in three people think they’re actually needed at all their meetings… and yet we keep attending. Why? Because we’re worried that if we don’t, we’ll miss important information, be seen as a less valuable member of the team, or feel excluded. 

“Meeting FOMO often stems from cultures of presenteeism, and the myth that presence equates to output,” From Molly Johnson-Jones, expert on flexible work and co-founder & CEO of Flexa, tells Stylist. “When workers believe that they will be excluded from opportunities for promotion unless they show up, or sidelined by colleagues for ‘shirking’ responsibilities, they will do so even if their individual wellbeing and performance suffers in reality.”

There’s also another type of meeting FOMO: when you’re not invited to a meeting, and feel a sting of rejection. This is “human nature”, says work expert Holly Corscadden, from Space32, “particularly when you’re young and new into the workforce. It’s only natural to want a seat at the table at the beginning of your career.”

Both types of meeting FOMO can have a big impact. “Meeting FOMO can greatly impact how you feel in your role,” Corscadden. “Being excluded from meetings where you should be involved in the decision-making process can leave you feeling undervalued and ultimately, disengaged. On the other hand, attending too many meetings can prohibit you from getting through other tasks.”

“Meeting FOMO causes everyone to lose out,” Johnson-Jones agrees. “Employees who waste their time attending meetings unnecessarily, or who feel excluded when they’re not invited, will likely become frustrated and disengaged. These feelings can occur regardless of whether meetings are taking place in offices or virtually, and impact individuals in their professional and personal lives. Employers will also pay the price where wasted time impacts overall business performance, and where disengagement leads to staff quitting.”

There are ways to tackle meeting FOMO on an individual, emotional level, but the truth is that change really has to come from the top. Let’s kick off with what you can do personally, then get into the specifics of how workplaces need to mix things up. 

As an individual 

On a personal level, tackling the anxiety and sadness about meeting FOMO is about fact-checking those feelings. Get the sense that you’re going to miss out on something important? Have a think and make a list of information you genuinely needed that you’ve gained from previous meetings. If that list is looking more than a tad short, perhaps this fear isn’t rooted in reality. Feel like an outsider when you see everyone else on a conference call? Remind yourself that if that meeting would actually be beneficial to you, you probably would have been invited, and that you’ve thus been freed from the boredom of yet another needless invite on your calendar.

“It can be helpful to reflect on recent meetings you attended and think about how useful, interesting, or enjoyable they were,” suggests Corscadden. “It’s likely some of them were not and your time would have been better spent getting into your task list.”

As a workplace

Now we’re getting into the good stuff. If lots of people are experiencing meeting FOMO, and attending loads of meetings that are ultimately a waste of time, that’s a sign of a major company issue. Do nothing to change this and you’re likely to lose staff, who’ll quickly get fed up. 

“If companies are running meetings in a productive way and value output over presence, workers can tackle FOMO by reminding themselves that events they’re not invited to wouldn’t be of benefit to them anyway,” says Johnson-Jones. “As long as this is the case, there’s also no reason for workers to worry that they will be excluded in any way for not attending.

“Where this is not the case and company cultures revolve around presenteeism, workers should try to reframe their perspective on FOMO. Rather than fret about being left out at your current company, think of all the opportunities with fair, inclusive employers you’re missing out on by staying where you are.”

The solution to meeting FOMO, from a workplace perspective, is a big shift in the culture bosses are creating. Presenteeism as a whole needs to go. Transparency is key – about how workers are judged, about the purpose of meetings, about why people are (and are not) required at different catch-ups.

“Companies should be transparent about how they measure performance,” Johnson-Jones notes. “If workers know that they’re being judged against objective, output-based markers - rather than presenteeism - they’re far less likely to feel under pressure to attend meetings which aren’t relevant to them. 

“Employers who want to nurture inclusive workplaces where employees are able to thrive should firstly set clear expectations and increase transparency around meetings, and also around the values held by the company and its management, too - focusing on output over presenteeism.”

Then there are the practical steps. First off, when a manager is booking in a meeting, they should question if that meeting is necessary and the best way of getting the desired result. To repeat a common refrain: could this meeting be an email? Scrapping any needless emails means that when a genuinely important meeting happens, people will be more likely to attend. 

If getting everyone in one room (virtual or IRL) is required, “it’s vital managers make sure they get the right people in that room,” says Corscadden. “Include everyone who will make a valuable contribution and who needs to be involved in the decision-making process.” That also means not inviting people who don’t need to be there. 

Ensure meetings have a clear agenda and purpose that’s visible to everyone. Nothing is likely to induce FOMO and feelings of rejection quite like seeing your colleagues in a meeting that seems like a secret. Along with this, empower people to decline meetings if they look over the agenda and decide that it’s not the best use of their time. 

“Requiring that all meeting invitations come with an agenda can help,” Johnson-Jones recommends. “This way, individuals can judge for themselves whether a meeting is relevant to them, and opt out if not. If only part of a larger meeting is relevant to an individual, or they are interested but not required to know about what’s being covered, they should feel able to drop out as needed, or ask for the deck to be circulated afterwards.”

That point about the deck is important, too. Ensure that notes or recordings of the meeting are available, so that no one feels like they’ll miss out if, for example, they just couldn’t make that specific time or didn’t have a spare hour. 

In short: the path to getting rid of meeting FOMO is to make meetings better (which often means reducing how many you’re having). Make meetings better, and everyone’s time is used in a better way, engagement rises, workplace happiness rises, and all other good things. Save meetings, save the (working) world. 

Images: Getty