Ask any CEO how much they spend on real estate, software, or marketing, and they'll know down to the dollar. Ask them how much they spend on meetings, and you'll get a blank stare. Yet for most knowledge-work companies, meetings are the second-largest expense after compensation itself—often consuming 15-25% of total payroll.

Based on data from over 2,000 meetings tracked on our platform, here's how to calculate your company's true meeting spend, compare it against benchmarks, and determine if you're overspending.

The Three-Step Calculation Method

Step 1: Calculate Your Loaded Hourly Rates

First, determine the true hourly cost for different role categories. Don't just use base salary—include benefits, overhead, and opportunity costs.

Example calculations:

• Engineer: $160K salary × 1.4 ÷ 2,000 = $112/hour
• Manager: $140K salary × 1.4 ÷ 2,000 = $98/hour
• Sales Rep: $110K salary × 1.4 ÷ 2,000 = $77/hour
• Executive: $300K salary × 1.4 ÷ 2,000 = $210/hour

Step 2: Estimate Weekly Meeting Hours by Role

Survey your team or analyze calendar data to determine average weekly meeting hours. Based on our data, here are typical ranges:

• Individual Contributors: 8-15 hours/week
• Managers: 15-25 hours/week
• Senior Managers: 20-30 hours/week
• Executives: 25-35 hours/week

Step 3: Calculate Total Spend

Multiply: (Number of employees per role) × (Hourly rate) × (Weekly meeting hours) × 52 weeks

Industry Benchmarks: Are You Overspending?

Based on analysis of 2,000+ meetings across various companies, here are healthy benchmarks for meeting spend as a percentage of total payroll:

If you're spending more than 25% of payroll on meetings, you likely have significant waste. If you're under 15%, you might be under-communicating (though remote-first companies can be lower through effective async work).

Meeting Spend by Company Type

Tech Companies: High Spend, High Complexity

Tech companies typically spend 20-25% of payroll on meetings due to:

• High salary rates ($100-200/hour average)
• Complex product development requiring coordination
• Agile ceremonies (standups, planning, retros)
• Cross-functional collaboration needs

Example: 50-person SaaS startup

Professional Services: Meeting-Intensive Business Model

Consulting, agencies, and professional services firms spend 30-40% of time in meetings—but many of these are billable client meetings, making them revenue-generating rather than pure cost.

Manufacturing/Operations: Lower Meeting Intensity

Companies with significant frontline/operations staff typically spend 8-12% of total payroll on meetings, as most employees are doing hands-on work rather than knowledge work requiring collaboration.

The Meeting Audit: Identifying Waste

Once you know your total spend, the next step is determining how much is waste. Here's a systematic audit approach:

1. Categorize All Meetings

List all recurring meetings and categorize them:

• High-value: Strategic decisions, critical coordination, customer/partner meetings
• Medium-value: Planning, problem-solving, necessary status updates
• Low-value: FYI meetings, status theater, poorly run meetings
• No-value: Meetings that should be emails, zombie meetings that outlived their purpose

2. Calculate Value-to-Cost Ratio

For each meeting category, estimate the value generated versus cost:

3. Target Waste Reduction

Based on our data, typical waste breakdown:

• 10-15% of meetings should be cancelled entirely
• 20-30% should be replaced with async communication
• 30-40% can be shortened by 25-50%
• 40-50% have too many attendees (average 2-3 unnecessary people)

Most companies can reduce meeting costs by 30-40% without any loss of productivity—in fact, productivity typically increases.

The Hidden Multiplier: Opportunity Cost

The calculations above show direct salary costs, but the true cost is higher due to opportunity cost. Every hour in a meeting is an hour not spent on productive work.

For most knowledge workers, the opportunity cost multiplier is 2-3x:

• An engineer in a $500 meeting isn't writing $1,000-1,500 worth of code
• A salesperson in a $300 internal meeting isn't making $600-900 worth of sales calls
• A product manager in a $400 meeting isn't doing $800-1,200 worth of strategy work

This is why even "necessary" meetings should be optimized ruthlessly—the cost is far higher than it appears.

Tracking Meeting Spend Over Time

Smart companies track meeting spend as a key operational metric, just like they track revenue, burn rate, or customer acquisition cost. Here's how:

1. Monthly metric: Total meeting hours × average loaded rate ÷ total employees
2. Efficiency metric: Meeting cost as % of payroll (target: 15-22%)
3. Trend metric: Is meeting time increasing or decreasing?
4. Quality metric: Employee satisfaction with meeting efficiency (quarterly survey)

What Good Looks Like

The most efficient companies we've tracked share these characteristics:

• They know their total meeting spend and track it quarterly
• They're spending 15-20% of payroll on meetings (below average)
• Meeting time is trending down or stable, not growing
• They default to async and only meet synchronously when necessary
• They audit recurring meetings quarterly and cancel waste
• Meeting costs are visible to all employees
• They have cultural norms around meeting efficiency

Conclusion: You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure

Most companies have no idea how much they spend on meetings. They track every other major expense category but treat meeting time as infinite and free. This is a massive blind spot.

For a typical 100-person knowledge-work company, meetings cost $8-12 million per year. That's your second-largest expense after salaries themselves. It deserves the same level of scrutiny and optimization as any other multi-million dollar budget line.

Start by calculating your total spend using the method above. Compare it to benchmarks. If you're overspending—and most companies are—you now have a clear target for improvement. Even a 20% reduction in meeting waste can save millions and dramatically improve productivity.