By YOUNG MONEY Staff
29 July 2011

Most workers dread status meetings, whether they have to prepare a presentation or simply suffer through them. As much as many managers insist these meetings are crucial to sharing information, Avinoam Nowgrodski writes for ZDNet that this age-old custom may actually be dispensable.

Nowgrodski acknowledges that sharing information is an important function in most businesses, particularly now as the proportion of knowledge workers in the world steadily increases. The two main issues, he suggests, are that status updates create a workload entirely separate from the company's ultimate objective and information sharing becomes structured around a fairly intermittent timeline.

Instead, Nowgrodski suggests companies could improve worker productivity by creating open work processes that give workers access to relevant work as it happens. This creates a continuous check that can allow managers to discover problems as they arise.

The example he gives is Edwards Deming's suggestion that the auto industry use quality testing throughout its production process. U.S. companies rejected the idea and ultimately fell behind Japanese manufacturers that adopted the idea.

A recent survey by Clarizen suggests that most workers - 70 percent - believe status meetings do not contribute to their work, according to HR Reporter.