This company is cancelling meetings in 2023 to free up employee time

Canadian e-commerce company Shopify is trying to help employees start the new year with emptier calendars. Shopify has announced it is cancelling all recurring meetings if they involve more than two people. It is also reinstating a rule saying no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays. Big meetings with more than 50 people can only be held during a six-hour window on Thursdays, per Shopify’s latest guidelines.

In a memo to employees, which was seen by CNN, Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian said the decision to cancel meetings was taken to free up employee time. “To start 2023, we're cancelling all Shopify meetings with more than two people. Let's give people back their maker time. Companies are for builders. Not managers,” he wrote on Twitter.

Meetings are a bug. Today, we shipped a fix to this bug at @Shopify. To start 2023, we're cancelling all Shopify meetings with more than two people. Let's give people back their maker time. Companies are for builders. Not managers.https://t.co/aw7BJxwmC6

— Kaz Nejatian (@CanadaKaz) January 3, 2023

Virtual meetings saw a huge uptick during the pandemic, with many remote employees complaining about the digital fatigue they brought with them.

Shopify is trying to combat this problem by encouraging employees to decline unnecessary meetings. Nejatian said employees should “be really critical” about what meetings they schedule. Staff has also been told to remove themselves from large internal chat groups as the e-commerce company reviews its communication tools.

Shopify said its employees’ Slack usage can be “bloated, noisy, and distracting,” and that it will split internal communication between Slack and Workplace by Meta.

“Over the years, we’ve seen excess meetings creep back into our day to day,” Nejatian told Financial Post. “We know no one joined Shopify to sit in meetings.”