One of my friends is very diligent about setting her auto responder. For those that are unfamiliar, that is what generates those automatic messages that send you a reply message that says they are out of the office, and will respond to your message when they get back. Annoying, but informative. I don’t email her very frequently, but many times, I get a message that she is out of town, in meetings, and will respond in however many days. Of course, if I need immediate assistance, to call her office and speak to another person. Fine. In all honesty, it is probably her corporate policy to have that set.
However, it got me to thinking. Unless she is going somewhere to talk to herself, there are at least a few others who are in the same boat. After all, it’s a meeting. Then, my mind started trying to figure out, roughly, the cost of having her out of the office, and whether or not that meeting would ever result in enough revenue to justify it.
Let me run some numbers by you: Let’s say, for the purposes of using nice, round numbers, that my friend makes $52,000 a year. A number I chose, ostensibly, to say she makes $1000 per week. Now, it should be noted that I am not going to include taxes, benefits, and other “soft costs” that, typically, add about 30% to the cost of labor. Having said that, we will presume a daily rate of $200. As far as assumpitons, let’s also go with a 2 day meeting, and some modest travel costs. I will also assume a half day of travel time, which is significant, because many companies, while their employees are salaried, will offer “comp time”; that is, time off the books to compensate for a really long day. In some facet, that 1/2 day of travel (each way) will be lost in terms of productivity.
The numbers work out to something like this:
$600 in Labor (2 day meeting, plus 2 half days of travel)
$300 in Airfare (assumes an advance purchase airfare for a relatively short distance)
$300 in Hotel costs ($129 per night, plus tax, for two nights.)
$150 in meals ($50 per day for three days)
$1350 per person, per meeting, not counting the costs of the venue, meeting materials, support staff, planning, etc.
A 10 person meeting would be about $15000 (lets add the aforementioned costs)
A 50 person meeting around $75000.
Now, my question would then revolve around what the monetary benefit would be? Would have 50 of your managers together for a couple of days yield an additional $75000 in revenue just to break even? Sure, arguably, it could happen over a year or two, but this meeting would probably occur once or twice a year.
Should we do away with meetings? I don’t know that the data supports that just yet, but with technology allowing very easy video conferences, conference calls, and rapid communication, can the messages be communicated just as well? Ok, I admit, I’ve hit the mute button and “multitasked” during video conferences before, but I’ve also “Blackberried” and left for a bathroom run during “traditional” conferences,as well. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the in-person meeting is the “face time”. Teambuilding. Cameraderie. Some of those things are difficult to hang a price tag on, Some of those things cannot be expected to ever have a hard Return On Investment. Teambuildings, for example, are very important to opening channels of communication, and don’t need to happen every year. However, the quarterly “Sales Strategy” or “Revenue Management” meetings? Perhaps those should be left to less costly measures. We tend to spend willy-nilly on anything “sales” related, at the expense of other things. Never mind that having your sales people together means they’re not, well, selling.
Anyways, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got a meeting to go to. Food for thought.
