New research from Epson and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) has found workers waste two hours and 39 minutes in meetings every week, and it's costing businesses an estimated £26 billion a year.
The report found that if these wasted hours had been spent productively this would equate to roughly 13 million more productive hours per week and an annual increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of approximately 1.7 percent.
The results found that UK office workers think that over half their time in meetings is wasted, as they estimate spending 4 hours in meetings per week and believe that 2 hours 39 minutes of this time is wasted. However, respondents make up an average of 1 hour and 50 minutes of that wasted time later on. This means that the average office worker wastes 49 minutes per week, equating to the loss of roughly £26 billion to the UK economy estimated by Cebr.