No Meeting Day: A New Workplace Philosophy at Kezber

Are you familiar with "No Meeting Day," "Focus Time," and "DeZooming"? These on-trend approaches to the workweek aim to boost productivity and efficiency. At Kezber, we're all about the modern workplace, which is why we recently began to embrace these new philosophies.

For Kezber and the vast majority of businesses out there, the pandemic ushered in an entirely new way of working. Already having mastered the Cloud and collaborative tools such as Microsoft Teams, we were well equipped to make the telecommuting leap. However, the modern workplace poses certain challenges beyond IT prowess—specifically, our overreliance on emails and meetings.

Too Many Meetings!

Let's be honest, you're probably having too many meetings. In fact, Atlassian has noted how an average of 31 hours are spent in unproductive meetings every month—and that's per person!

When you're deep "in the zone" and suddenly interrupted, it takes an average of 23 minutes for you to return to your full productivity potential. Add another 10-15 minutes of meeting time (and preparation), multiply that number by X interruptions per day, and you'll see how quickly this lost time adds up!

Thankfully, modern workplace philosophies are helping people get back to being their productive selves! Let's take a look at a few of them…

No Meeting Day

No Meeting Day helps boost employee productivity with an entire day dedicated to focusing on the work at hand. At Kezber, we strongly encourage our employees to set aside a full day to tackle more demanding projects.

"Our president told us about a presentation by Zoom CEO Aparna Bawa. In it, Bawa advocates for no-meeting days," said Alexandra Bélanger, director of human resources at Kezber. "We're gradually putting this policy in place to reduce our frequency of video calls."

No Meeting Day works particularly well for jobs requiring several hours of concentration or for a department such as human resources, which generally needs a full day every week to manage interviews.

Focus Time

Having the same objective as No Meeting Day, Focus Time asks employees to block out approximately 1–2 hrs in their Outlook calendars 2–4 times a week. In doing so, these employees can focus on their tasks without feeling bombarded by meetings, email requests, and other interruptions.

To help allocate this time, tools such as Outlook Insights let you easily set aside moments throughout your day to tick off tasks in your agenda. Highly efficient, Focus Time is a darling among Kezber's marketing and project management teams.

DeZooming

"Just because you can use video doesn't mean you have to." Says Jeremy Bailenson, founder and director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which recently unveiled a study on the psychological effects of hours spent in virtual meetings. (La Presse)

"On Zoom, we receive nonverbal stimuli from several people at the same time," notes Yarledis Coneo, consultant and specialist in work-family balance. "The brain gets tired more quickly." (La Presse)

As highlighted in this La Presse article, videoconferencing can drain energy and disrupt employee performance.

As a result, some companies have started restricting the time allotted to Zoom meetings. To ensure the technology isn't being abused, these companies ask employees to refrain from using Zoom at certain times throughout the day.

Conclusion

At Kezber, we strongly encourage teamwork and never hesitate to challenge traditional ways of doing things. Rather than micro-manage, we like to manage by objectives. For us, it's only natural to sometimes disconnect and distance ourselves from notifications and other stimuli.

By embracing modern workplace philosophies, we aim to bolster productivity and foster peace of mind among employees.

If you're interested in joining a forward-thinking company and want to hear more about our approach to the modern workplace, we invite you to reach out to our human resources team.