Team meetings. One-on-ones. Daily check-ins. Weekly catch-ups. Bi-weekly syncs. Even the revered “brainstorm.” So many meetings are squeezed into our calendars that it’s starting to feel like meeting about work is getting in the way of completing any work.
Over the past two years, Team has been experimenting with new, digital-first ways of working, right here within our own company—from the tools we use to the habits that guide how we work together. Our aim is to design a better way of working that is flexible, inclusive and connected, and empowers our employees to do their best work for our customers.
When we’ve spoken with people about their work lives, one of the biggest concerns we’ve heard across roles and functions is the burden of meeting overload and how this restricts the freedom to focus or fit other obligations into the day. In fact, this is a global issue: Future Forum’s research shows that more than 9 in 10 people want flexibility in when they work—even greater than the number who want flexibility in where they work.
One of the problems with the 9-to-5, five-day workweek is that any of those hours (or worse, all of them) can get turned into a meeting. Our calendars increasingly look like Tetris, stacked full of meetings with perhaps a few 30-minute or maybe one-hour breaks—enough for just that, a break, but not long enough for any deep work. And so the “work” spills into the hours when life is supposed to happen, before breakfast begins or once dinner is over.
At Team, the past two years have accelerated our innovations to reinvent work, from developing new products like huddles and clips to piloting internal programs that change how work works inside our company. Today we’re sharing more about a few new programs at Team, which we’ve formally adopted after a pilot period, that redesign the workweek to reduce internal meetings across the company and give employees more control over their calendars: Focus Fridays and Maker Weeks.
