Zoom ends no-meeting wednesday policy, calling It ‘barrier to collaboration’
Zoom Video Communications Inc. has nixed its policy forbidding internal meetings on Wednesdays, saying it hindered collaboration, a move that goes against the grain — and its own employees' preferences — as more companies look to reduce unnecessary gatherings.
Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan disclosed the shift last week in a memo to employees, which also included a new policy on office attendance, requiring those living within 50 miles of a corporate location to come in twice a week. It reverses a policy Zoom implemented in the early stages of the pandemic after surveying employees, who said they wanted to spend less time in meetings to have “more time to think, plan, focus, and execute.” In March 2022, the company said that 84% of employees preferred to continue the policy.
“As we further ramp up on hybrid work, we've decided to make another change and end our No Internal Meeting Wednesdays,” Yuan said in the memo. “We move fast, and this effort has become more of a barrier to collaboration than it was intended. And as an increasingly global company, no Internal Meeting Wednesday creates a lack of clarity for Zoomies working across multiple time zones.”
From now on, Zoom employees should instead “set the personal boundaries you need to be successful,” he said. A Zoom representative declined to comment beyond the memo.
The CEO's decision runs against what some other firms are doing to reduce unproductive meetings, which waste $100 million a year at large companies. Earlier this year, Shopify Inc. eliminated all recurring meetings with more than two people and started discouraging meetings on Wednesdays. Last month, the Canadian e-commerce firm rolled out a calculator embedded in employees' calendar app that estimates the
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