Get out of the bored-room
At the end of August, as the Canberra winter thaws and we start to remember the warmth of the sun again, we’re excited to announce “Another Meeting with Synergy”; but not as you know it.
A first-of-its-kind solution that will help our people, both staff and clients, escape the bored-room and embrace more creative and efficient working practices.
We undertook national research to help us understand exactly what the working experience is like for our APS clients, as well as those in the Private Sector. This new research revealed that office workers in the ACT are among the country’s most likely to describe meetings in a negative way – using words such as unproductive (25%), inefficient (24%) and uninspiring (22%) to describe a typical meeting. Those working in the public service (58%) were even more likely to disparage meetings, labelling them as boring (32%), a waste of time (31%) and unproductive (31%).
The results are startling given the average office worker attends almost 400 meetings every year, equating to an average of 220 hours a year trapped in unproductive meetings.
Productivity expert and author of The 25-Minute Meeting, Donna McGeorge, welcomed our solution, arguing “more workplaces need to embrace out-of-the-box thinking to better engage both clients and internal staff.”
“Bloated, inefficient meetings are the bane of the modern workplace,” McGeorge said. “Companies like Synergy who embrace new ways of working not only stand out from a cultural perspective but see real increases in productivity, creativity and engagement.”
Another Meeting solution is the brainchild of our in-house creative team who were challenged to come up with a more engaging and inspiring alternative to the traditional work meeting. The initiative includes the launch of a mobile meeting service that can travel throughout the CBD and act as a remote meeting location – providing our people the chance to meet outside the boardroom with coffee, drinks and light refreshments provided to help encourage collaboration and creativity.
Sally Dorsett, Synergy’s Executive Director of People and Organisational Development, believes the solution will not only impact morale, but performance.
“Meetings should be where we engage, collaborate, and share. They should be the most creative part of our day, but we have turned them into something dull and unproductive,” Dorsett said. “We’re hoping Another Meeting provides a fresh alternative that will allow people to experience work in a much more engaging way.”
See further media coverage from The Canberra Times here
