Track the Real Cost of Meetings with Meeting Miser
Most bosses know that dragging the troops into a meeting or conference call takes them away from doing actual work. But at what real-world cost? Find out with Meeting Miser, a seriously fascinating -- and potentially sobering -- meeting timer that calculates the cost down to the penny. Here's how the widget works:
Type in the titles and locations of all your attendees, click the Start button, and the Miser runs a tab of your meeting's actual cost, as measured by the median salaries of everybody in the room. (PayScale, the Seattle-based compensation research firm, knows. Its database includes over 8.5 million user-submitted salary profiles across hundreds of industries.) A regional sales manager in New York, for instance, wants to round up five account executives for an hour-long strategy huddle? That's a $379 conversation.You can also set alarms: The Miser will notify you when the meeting runs over a fixed time or reaches a specified dollar amount. I love the way this tool draws on real-world geographic and financial data rather than making wild, unfounded estimates. What do you think? Would Meeting Miser give you the incentive to keep meetings short and to the point? Would you ever supply the results to a meeting-happy boss in hopes of changing his/her ways? Sound off in the Comments.