Acceptance rate
The share of meeting invitations you send that are answered with "attending," a metric of how efficiently a team schedules.
Acceptance rate is the share of meeting invitations you send that are answered with “attending.” Google Calendar and Outlook automatically tally the “Accept,” “Tentative,” and “Decline” responses to an invitation, and this share of acceptances becomes an important metric for measuring how efficiently a team schedules.
Trends by meeting type
Acceptance rate varies widely by meeting type. It tends to be high for one-on-ones with close colleagues and small team recurring meetings, and tends to drop for large company-wide meetings and for scheduling with outside parties you do not yet know well. What matters is not whether the absolute value is high or low but how it changes: when the acceptance rate of the same meeting starts to fall, that is a signal to rethink how the meeting is designed.
Factors that raise acceptance rate
Acceptance rate shifts a great deal depending on how the meeting is designed. Sharing the agenda in advance, choosing an appropriate time slot, and narrowing the attendee list are the main levers for improvement.
Measures that raise acceptance rate
- Share the agenda together with the invitation (the reason to attend becomes clear)
- Keep the length to 30 minutes or less (the psychological hurdle of being tied up drops)
- Clearly separate required attendees from optional attendees
- Set the meeting during daytime hours that are less likely to eat into the other person’s focus time
- Avoid dates too far ahead and propose times within the next 1-2 weeks
What to do when acceptance rate is low
For a meeting whose acceptance rate falls below 60%, you should reconsider whether the meeting is needed at all. Consider whether it could be replaced with asynchronous communication, or whether the number of attendees could be reduced. A low acceptance rate is silent feedback from attendees saying “this meeting has nothing to do with me.”
Cautions when using it as a metric
When you use acceptance rate as an organizational metric, overlooking “accepted but did not attend” makes the number look better than reality. Track acceptance rate together with the actual attendance rate, and read a large gap in a meeting as a sign that pro forma acceptance has become the norm. In addition, meetings hosted by a manager have a structural bias toward high acceptance rates because they are hard to decline, so comparing meetings across job levels by acceptance rate alone is not appropriate.