6 strategies to reduce ghost meetings
You might not realize it, but your meeting rooms could be haunted. In fact, around 30% of the bookings in your office may be "ghost meetings" — reservations that no one ends up using. These ghost meetings may cost your company much more than you think. In many cases, employees may feel like there’s not enough meeting rooms, when the real problem is that there are just too many ghost meetings taking place, which limits the number of available meeting rooms unnecessarily.
What is a ghost meeting?
A ghost meeting is a scheduled meeting that no one attends. These meetings are booked in advance, often just to secure a room "in case" it's needed, but when the time comes, they aren't canceled—even though the room remains unused.
Why should I fear ghost meetings?
Ghost meetings are a huge strain on available meeting rooms. Consider this scenario: you are planning a meeting, but there are no available meeting rooms to be booked. Then you find out, that in fact there were many available meeting rooms, but it’s too late. It’s time consuming because employees need to figure out either alternative spaces or alternative times for their meetings. And it gets worse: when this becomes the experience of the employees (that they can’t find a meeting room when needed) they end up booking rooms “just in case”. This makes the problem spiral and just increases the number of ghost meetings.
Furthermore, when employees complain about lack of meeting space - they probably do not know it is because of ghost meetings, they just experience the lack of available rooms when they want to book one - organizations often end up having to rent more space or even moving to a new location just to get more space. This is expensive and unsustainable. Worse, it is often very unnecessary.
Instead, take a look at solving the issue where you are, before signing any type of new lease.
What can you do about it?
Step one is to find out how big the issue is. To find out, your best option is to do an occupancy study. This takes less than a day to set up, and within a week you will know how each and every room is used - including when it is not used, ie when there is a ghost meetings.
When you know how big the issue is, it is easier to decide on which measures to take to reduce them. It should also serve as a baseline, where another study should be done a few months later to see the effect.
Strategies to reduce ghost meetings
Measure the extent of the problem
Clean up booking system
Room booking reminders
Cancellation policies
Room booking credits
Automatic cancellations on no-shows
1 Measure how big the problem is
Measuring how big the problem is will be an important first step. This not only highlights the issue but also helps in finding solutions and effectively communicating the challenges. If the problem turns out to be minor, minimal action might be needed—or the real issue could be a shortage of meeting rooms. However, in most cases, the issue is significant, with no-shows accounting for 10 to 30% of all bookings.
An occupancy study is the easiest way to start addressing this. Empire AI has developed an app and analytics platform that lets you begin an occupancy study within a day. It provides all the data you need, including insights into how many meetings are actually ghost meetings. Read more here.
2 Clean up booking system
Regularly reviewing and cleaning up the booking system helps remove outdated or recurring reservations that are no longer needed. In many cases, there can actually be bookings from employees who no longer work at the company. For all meetings that are recurring (meaning they are automatically scheduled to happen), send out emails to the relevant employees who are in charge of the booking. Inform them that all these bookings will be deleted, unless they report back that this is in fact a meeting that is being used. After a certain time, delete all these recurring bookings that no one has ‘claimed’.
Recurring meetings can be the largest danger when it comes to ghost meetings. This is because many employees use the recurring meeting function simply as a placeholder in case a meeting is necessary, although they often do not take place. Send a reminder to all those with recurring meetings, that they need to cancel the meeting room as soon as they know that they will not be using it.
3 Room booking reminders
Set up automated reminders for employees before their meeting time. These reminders prompt them to confirm if they still need the room, helping to prevent ghost meetings by giving them the chance to cancel unneeded reservations in advance. It should not be too far ahead, because then you risk that they confirm without knowing that they will be using it. If it’s too close to the meeting time, the room will still be kept from other employees in the meantime.
Consider testing different times of send-outs, and a number of send-outs. One reminder can be sent 1-2 days before and another on the same day. Just keep in mind that if there are too may, it might lead to the reminder just being ignored.
4 Cancellation policies
Implement clear policies that encourage cancellation of bookings. For example, you can require employees to cancel a day before the meeting starts if they no longer need the room. Letting employees know the extent of the issue, and also giving them data when it improves can be a great incentive to follow the cancellation policies.
5 Room booking credits
Introduce a system where employees are given a limited number of booking credits per month. This encourages mindful room usage, as employees will only book rooms when they are sure they need them, reducing unnecessary reservations. However, this can be time consuming to set up and manage, and be an annoyance to employees. It is not recommended unless ghost meetings is a huge problem and no other measures are working.
6 Automatic cancellations on no-shows
Set up an automatic system that cancels meeting room bookings if no one shows up within a certain period, such as 10 minutes after the scheduled start time. This prevents ghost meetings from blocking room availability for the rest of the day. It also has a second effect - getting people into the meeting room on time, because if they do not they risk others taking the room.
Would you like to know more about finding out how many ghost meetings there are in your office and how they can be reduced?
Around 30% of all meeting bookings might actually result in ghost meetings. Reducing this can really improve meeting room availability without having to do ANY physical changes, rent more space or move offices. Book a call with us to know more.