Listen: could a lack of face to face meetings impact businesses in the future?

The latest research from Edinburgh Business School (which counts Chris Whitty among its alumni) shows why we all need to spend more time in face to face meetings. But with only a handful of workers returning to the office and the majority still working from home, could the lack of face to face meetings be detrimental to the future of business?

Professor Heather McGregor and a team of researchers at the Centre for Networks & Enterprise have published three papers in the last few weeks showing why connections to others are so important.

After looking at the FTSE 350 across 5 years pre pandemic – a sample of 2169 firm-year observations (241 companies and 9 years) – and 3030 unique directors, they came to the conclusion that the people that linked companies together (directors in common) helped them to grow faster if they were connected to bigger and better companies.  And companies whose links were more diverse (through directors of both genders, and with companies in different sectors) performed best of all.

Aston spoke to Professor Heather McGregor.

Photo by Glenn Carstens Peter on Unsplash