Tech company allows employees to say no to meetings called by their boss, leave office chat groups

It was during the Covid-19 pandemic that offices moved to a virtual setup with meetings happening all around the day and work going much beyond the official shift hours. It seems the Canadian e-commerce company Shopify understands this and wants to relieve its employees from the terror of attending never-ending meetings every other day. Shopify has introduced a new rule for employees that lets them say no to meetings.

Announcing the New Year gift, the e-commerce company said that it is helping empty employees' calendars. The company also said that it is cancelling all recurring meetings if they involve more than two people. The memo that the company sent to employees was seen by folks at CNN.

Shopify also informed employees that no one can schedule meetings on Wednesdays and big meetings with more than 50 people can only happen once a week on Thursday during a six-hour window. Announcing the new rule, Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian said that the decision to cancel all meetings was taken to free up employee time. Nejatian took to Twitter to announce the new employee rule and said, "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."

Shopify is giving more power to employees. The company is also encouraging employees to decline unnecessary meetings. Nejatian further said employees should "be really critical" about which meetings to schedule. "Over the years, we've seen excess meetings creep back into our day to day and …. we know no one joined Shopify to sit in meetings," Nejatian told Financial Post.

In addition, to get rid of unnecessary meetings at work, the e-commerce giant also said that employees can leave larger work groups. Shopify is currently reviewing its communication tools. It said that it will split internal communication between Slack and Workplace by Meta so that employees can select groups that deserve more attention than others.

Recently, an Indian company tried making employees' lives easier than ever. Fantasy sports company Dream11 announced a Dream 11 Unplug policy, specially designed to let employees enjoy their off days without having to deal with work emails, messages, and calls. The new policy allows employees to cut off from work and work-related emails, messages, calls, and even their colleagues for a week.

"At Dream11, we actually log off the 'Dreamster' who is unplugged, off from every possible Stadium communication platform, be it slack, emails and even WhatsApp groups. We do this to ensure absolutely no one from the Dreamster's work ecosystem can contact them while they are on their well-deserved break," the company noted in a LinkedIn post announcing the new policy. "We understand that spending quality time with loved ones or just relaxing altogether on a vacation, can immensely improve the overall mood, quality of life, productivity in general and more," the company added.