Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

PARTLY DUE TO cultural shifts and partly due to a shifting beliefs about productivity and focus, we have found ourselves in a state of what you might call calendar bankruptcy: meetings are viewed skeptically as time-wasting; offices regularly schedule no-meeting days and there’s a cultural reflex towards “that could have been an email.”

But a new study of Norwegian workplace data took a closer look at the role and function of meetings in the modern workplace, and came to a conclusion that might be surprising, as it cuts against what has become common wisdom in the modern workplace: meetings are good for you.

“Meetings are the broccoli of work,” the study states. “Widely disliked, but probably good for us anyway.”

Few workplace functions are as derided as the meeting. The researchers open their paper quoting John Galbraith, who said in the 1960s that “meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” But their research found the exact opposite — that on the individual worker level, meetings “are the single strongest predictor of wage growth,” adding that “time spent in meetings contributes substantially more explanatory power than concentrated individual work, administrative tasks, training, travel, email or other observed workplace activities.”

In fact, when the researchers controlled for all other workday activities, the only thing that set people apart seemed to be meetings. “Meeting time remains the only positive and statistically significant predictor of wage-rank growth,” the researchers wrote.

There’s an apparent mismatch here between the perception of meetings’ value and the actual reality of meetings’ value. A Korn Ferry report this month found that 45 per cent of employees globally said they were “too busy” to work effectively, a sentiment that often puts meetings in the crosshairs (since, what faster way to feel a bit less busy than to clear meetings from the calendar). Other papers suggest there might be an upper ceiling for productive meeting time at around two hours per day — more, it should be said, than the 4.7 hours per week that the Norwegian workers studied were spending.

The paper is careful to say that it had found a correlation between time spent in meetings and wage growth, and that attributing causation could be tricky. (It’s worth noting that the study was done exclusively on Norwegian workplace data, so workplace cultural differences will play some role here.) Researchers speculate that communication between senior and junior employees could be a factor, or that workers are self-selecting to some degree. “Workers with higher ability, greater ambition or more complex responsibilities may sort into meeting-intensive jobs and firms,” the researchers wrote.

The takeaway for both sides might be to realize that meetings aren’t necessarily wasted time, even if they are annoying. For managers, cutting down on meeting time may save money on paper, but it comes at a cost; for workers, cutting down on meeting time may feel more productive in the short term, as it relieves calendar pressure, but may be harming wage growth in the long run.

“Meetings are the cost we have to pay to coordinate complex collective action within the firm,” said David J. Deming, a co-author of the paper. “So if you only ask people about the cost, and not the benefit, you will get a misleading picture of the value of meetings.”

WORKFORCE

The end of the relocation boom

Why has job relocation lost its appeal?

MUCH WORK HAS been done in Canada over the last couple years in addressing barriers to labour mobility, mainly in things like accreditation, licensing and certification requirements, all in service of the belief that with more labour mobility comes more opportunities to pursue work in new provinces, helping address regional labour shortages and allowing young Canadians to explore lower-cost-of-living areas.

The only problem is, workers appear to be getting tired of the idea of moving just for a new job.

New data from the U.S., and the Bank of America’s mobility index (which is looking at U.S. data, so apply some caution when projecting onto the Canadian market), finds that workers are increasingly less interested in moving for work, noting that the decline in worker mobility is “broad based” and sharpest among millennials and lower-income households, the very demographics that improved labour mobility often proclaims to help. “The slowdown is broad-based,” reads a Bank of America report. “The decline in the number of people moving continued in Q2 2026, and was more pronounced year-over-year,” they wrote.

In Canada, appetites for labour-based relocation remains relatively low. “Just three in 10 Canadians say they would be willing to move to another province if they are offered a suitable job,” a Statistics Canada survey from 2025 found, noting that the rate had barely changed between 2022 and 2025, a period where relocation was touted as a way to find work and lower your cost of living. (Recall the ‘Alberta is Calling’ campaign, for instance.)

That shows up when you ask Canadian employers as well. “Roughly one-quarter of businesses reported difficulties hiring workers from other provinces,” a 2026 TD report found, although it suggested that much of that still came down to uncertainty around licensing. They admit, however, that willingness to relocate remains a major factor that regulations can only indirectly affect. “Reducing regulatory barriers will not, on its own, eliminate every obstacle to labour mobility. Geography, housing costs, employment opportunities, personal circumstances and social ties all shape whether people relocate.”

A chaotic (and in some workers’ minds, hostile) job market in North America isn’t helping either. Exposed to many a story of people who moved only to find themselves quickly caught up in layoffs, many workers are becoming far more hesitant to chase jobs across provincial, state or even national lines.

“Workers are less likely to move in order to find employment,” stated a Brookings Institute report last year. “This drop has created concern that workers are less willing to relocate in response to positive or negative employment shocks … Such a trend would have significant policy implications for state and local governments, as well as at the federal level.”

EDUCATION

The business case for childcare

A group of prominent Canadians is calling on corporate leaders to support high-quality early childhood education

IT’S NOT A pipeline, or an AI buildout or another heavy industrial infrastructure project. Rather, a group of Canadian business leaders want the country to think about another high-ROI nation-building project: daycare.

A group of 22 prominent business leaders, including names like Candace Laing of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Mark Mulroney of CIBC, André Desmarais and Peter MacKay, signed on to an open letter calling for the country to invest in “quality early childhood education,” poignantly calling it a “nation-building investment in Canada’s future,” and arguing that “each dollar invested yields significant economic and social returns.”

"The purpose of the letter is to create awareness and recognition, asking others to consider quality early childhood education as critical to Canada's future and prosperity,” said JD Miller, president of B2ten, which coordinated the open letter. “In doing so we look to spark reflection, for leaders to recognize the importance of early education and consider how they can act to support its growth and development.”

The letter’s signatories would primarily like to build on the positive effects of the federal government’s move to support $10/day daycare, and noted that a 2025 study found that the federal childcare plan, modest as it was, allowed around 29,000 mothers to enter the workforce, generating an estimated $2.7 billion in annual GDP.

Anne-Marie Hubert, a board member of B2ten and a managing partner at EY Canada, put the case for daycare in labour terms, saying that without investments in childcare, we won’t have the quality of workers we need. “We have less worker than we need,” she said. “We have challenges with immigration. It’s a very low cost to invest in early childhood education versus the cost of developing cognitive skills, behavioural skills, social skills at a later stage.”

What the leaders would ideally like to see is something like a more iron-clad commitment to childcare, and argue that the politics often played with childcare investments make it less than impactful. While the federal government has promoted a $10/day childcare program, uptake from the provinces has been uneven: not only are some of the largest provinces lagging behind (Ontario caps fees at $22/day, while Alberta caps it at $15/day), but there is a potential funding cliff approaching in 2028 that these players in the corporate sector would like to see addressed.

“There cannot be uncertainty, because otherwise people don’t know what’s happening, and won’t open a childcare centre,” said economist Catherine Haeck, speaking to The Globe and Mail.

Coming at a moment when the country’s economic future is very much top of mind, these business leaders are hoping their pitch for a reinforced social safety net comes across as both a moral and economic imperative. “We’ve just got to do this if we want to have a great country, and maintain our vision of who we are,” said Desmarais, deputy chairman of the Power Corporation of Canada.

“We have been saying for many decades that public investments in early childhood education and care have multiple benefits that spread through the economy,” added Morna Ballantyne, executive director of Child Care Now. “It’s especially important at this time because the health of the economy is on everybody’s minds, especially because of the current trade war that the U.S. has started against Canada.” 

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