The Meeting Value Calculation

During December, we’re talking about meetings and how to be more efficient with your time and more productive. Sometimes, you just have to meet. Email and texts and so forth can be very effective, but sometimes you need to look each other in the eye and discuss things. However, if you think about the cost of meetings, you’ll hopefully be more sensitive to the true cost of that time.

Let’s say you you’re the president of a company and you have a staff meeting every Monday with your team. You include the VP of Sales & Marketing, the CFO, the VP of Operations, the IT manager, the customer service manager, and your admin who takes minutes. Have you ever thought about the cost of that group of people sitting around a table for an hour or three? Well, let’s do a little calculation. These executive and their annual and effective hourly pay rates are listed below.

Position                                            Annual Salary                        Effective Hourly Rate

President                                $175,000                               $84.13
VP of Sales & Marketing            $150,000                               $72.12
CFO                                        $150,000                               $72.12
VP of Operations                      $135,000                               $64.90
IT Manager                               $115,000                               $55.29
Customer Service Manager          $78,000                               $37.50
Executive Admin                        $42,000                              $20.19

Total                                     $845,000                            $406.25

So a two hour Monday morning meeting costs $812.50, at least from an effective rate. So the president should be thinking about his time and the time of his staff and whether or not the meeting effectiveness is worth $812.50 PER WEEK. If you meet every week, that’s an effective rate of $21,125 per year, just in staff meetings. You’ll need to be pretty darn efficient to make that investment in your business.

You and your team may not make the kind of salaries that this group makes, but you still have a hefty combined hourly rate for meetings of several people. Next time you’re in a meeting at your company, do a quick calculation and determine if you’re getting the best efficiency out of your meetings and if you’re solving problems and making good decisions worth the total cost of your team’s time.

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