Prezi is on a mission to help people communicate better through their virtual presentation and collaboration tools. As a remote-first company, Prezi has 275 employees all over the world, with main hubs in San Francisco, Budapest, Berlin, Riga, and soon-to-be Dublin. For two years and counting, Clockwise has helped Prezi’s employees take back their time and spend it in a more meaningful way.
“When the pandemic hit, and even before, we tried to go async,” says Keve Kutner, Senior Engineering Manager at Prezi. “We believe that you don’t have to be in meetings all the time and that the ones we do have should be meaningful.”
Bidding farewell to pointless meetings was a great first step, but it was just one piece in the larger time management puzzle. Prezi’s team also sought a better way to schedule their meetings, while creating room for deep work.
“We wanted to synchronize the meetings and make sure that we had focus time blocked,” Keve shares. “We were looking for tools that could automate some of those things for us.”
From scattered to streamlined
When one of Keve’s colleagues found Clockwise — a time orchestration platform that intelligently manages your calendar — Keve immediately jumped on board. Clockwise automatically moves meetings to their best times for everyone on the invite, resolves scheduling conflicts, and finds Focus Time for you and your team. “I was one of the early users,” shares Keve, “and it stuck.”
Prezi first implemented Clockwise in the Engineering department, where Engineers fell in love with their newfound Focus Time. Flexible meetings especially proved to be a standout feature at Prezi. This feature automatically suggests best meeting times based on a combination of factors: Focus Time cost, your meeting hours, other attendees’ meeting hours, and other preferences. “That's the most-used feature because it maximizes your Focus Time and then it still keeps the meeting at the time when it really makes sense,” says Keve.
Clockwise helped Prezi create an additional two to three hours of Focus Time per person per day. “We had meetings that were scattered. The benefit of using Clockwise was that it started to block things and move them.”
Why focus matters
In 2020, we asked 757 workers in the US how long they can go without being interrupted at work. Most responded “less than 15 minutes.” That’s exactly why we believe in scheduling in Focus Time, which we define as two or more hours of uninterrupted work.
“It was actually solving a use case that we had — it synchronized meaningful meetings, making sure that we had some time blocked, and making sure that most of this was automated.”
“If we started to translate the time saved, I'm sure there would be a monetary impact.” He continues, “If you look at the productivity of an Engineer, the more time that they have without disruption, the more they can do.”
Increased output isn’t the only perk of using Clockwise. More time makes for happier employees, too. Keve tells us that Prezi’s employees, especially Engineers, feel more supported in their day-to-day — not just with meetings and Focus Time, but with the small things too. “It helps with some of the recurring things like lunch breaks, for example. That's really helpful too, because then you have a block of time that you can use.”
See for yourself how Clockwise can help you spend time in a meaningful way. Get started today for free!
