The Potential of AI in Meetings
According to Calendly’s inaugural State of Scheduling Report, when meetings are productive, they have the power to drive authentic connections and boost team collaboration. That’s why 94% of employees are excited about the possibilities that AI and automated scheduling can unlock, as shared by Stephen Hsu, CPO of Calendly. He explains, “When complicated technologies and burdensome administrative tasks are removed, meetings have a unique ability to drive authentic connections and bring teams together to accomplish more.”
The study, which surveyed 1,200 professionals in the U.S. and U.K., confirms that successful individuals and companies consider meetings essential to their success, contrary to the belief that fewer meetings lead to increased productivity. In fact, 61% of surveyed employees spend three to five-plus hours per week in meetings that contribute to company goals. Of this group, 85% feel productive during these meetings.
“What people really resent are unproductive meetings,” says Hsu. “They resent the busywork around the meeting lifecycle—finding times to meet, building agendas, taking notes, managing follow-up and so on. They resent that lost time, because it’s time they’d rather channel into something strategic and ambitious.”
AI has the potential to eliminate the time wasted in manual coordination and streamline scheduling processes across different tools. It can free up employees to focus on essential tasks like professional development and mentoring others. In fact, 30% of employees believe that AI will enable them to dedicate more time to these important responsibilities.
The time spent managing meetings at all levels of an organization has become a costly behavior. Employees often switch between productivity tools to accomplish tasks, resulting in lost time. For example, 21% of sales and marketing professionals use a minimum of three different tools to schedule meetings. This contributes to 25% of all employees spending up to three to four hours a week scheduling meetings.
If there’s one consensus about the impact of AI, it’s that it increases productivity and enables outcome-oriented actions. The study reveals that 32% of employees would engage in more strategic planning and creative projects if AI freed up time in their day.
“Scheduling automation in service of getting meetings done in an effective way can improve the bottom line,” says Hsu. “The real ROI opportunity for AI is to optimize that experience and create an adaptable entity that pulls the data and the people a meeting needs at any point in the workflow.”
