Measures Taken by Japanese Enterprises to Increase the Efficiency of Meetings
Some Japanese companies have made great efforts to increase the efficiency of office work. One way has been to make meetings more efficient and this has included reducing the number of meetings that actually take place. A few examples of the measures taken by these companies are listed below.
・Review the need for regular meetings and if necessary, combine or abolish them.
・Collect the fee for the conference room from the section that uses the room for a meeting so that staff will be more conscious about the cost of a meeting.
・Reduce the number of meetings set up for the purpose of information distribution. Information may be shared among any number of staff by the use of computer network.
・Save travel expenses by introducing tele-conferencing instead.
・Schedule "Quiet Time" during which there should be no meetings, no telephone calls and no chat between colleagues so that staff may concentrate on their own work.
・Designate a day or hours of the day where most meetings are scheduled so that a reasonable amount of time is left free for other work.
・There should be no chairs in the meeting room. If attendants are made to stand, the meeting will be kept brief.
