Tired of your employees checking email in your meetings? Frustrated that your staff waste time logging onto LinkedIn while you’re going over company strategies? You’re not the only one. Laptops, smartphones and tablets are wonderful tools. However, this technology can play havoc with your company meetings.

The Solution

Jake Knapp, design partner at Google Ventures, in a new story on Medium suggests a nice solution: Bosses need to keep technology out of their meetings. Doing this, Knapp suggests, will increase productivity during these meetings in a spectacular way.

Bye-bye tablets

Here’s what Knapp says shouldn’t be allowed in meetings: laptops, tablets or smartphones. Yes, all of the good stuff. Staff need to keep those devices at their desks.

A timer

Of course, employers need to make concessions, too. Knapp proposes that bosses set up a timer everyone in the meeting can see. When the timer goes off, the meeting ends. This stands no matter what.