How to Make Work Meetings Productive?

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It’s hard to imagine the work of a company without meetings and meetings. It is believed that this type of interaction allows:

  • provide employees with the information they need to work;
  • promptly solve current project tasks;
  • motivate employees to achieve results;
  • create an evolving environment in the team.

How to replace ineffective meetings?

Low involvement of the personnel in work during meetings is not a reason to abandon them completely, but a reason to reconsider the approach to the organization and hold it. You should start with defining the goals. Most meetings are held to inform the staff, discuss current issues quickly, or find solutions to work tasks jointly. Decide whether to invite staff to the meeting by asking a single question: can the staff perform their assigned tasks without the meeting? If yes, feel free to replace the meeting with another type of communication. It is more effective to publish important information for employees or a report on a project on the corporate portal. And to discuss issues that do not require immediate solutions, it is convenient to organize a live chat. Then employees can participate in the conversation without taking a break from work.

What to do if you can’t do without a meeting? Hold a simple, productive meeting. It always ends on schedule or a little earlier, and participants have time to address their concerns.

7 Rules for a Simple and Productive Meeting

  1. Make a clear plan. It will help you strictly follow the stated topic and control the discussion. And employees will leave the meeting with clear instructions for completing their tasks.
  2. Publish the agenda and documents for review. This way, everyone involved will know what issues will be addressed and what results are expected of them.
  3. Discuss minor issues beforehand, and focus on the main topic at the meeting. It will reduce the duration of the meeting, increasing its fruitfulness. Employees will be more willing to attend the next meeting when they see that the time was not wasted.
  4. Limit the time for presentations. Too long a monologue tires the listener. A short presentation, on the other hand, communicates all information loud and clear.
  5. Accompany the presentations with colorful presentations because the human brain remembers visual information much better than auditory information.
  6. Provide opportunities for all stakeholders to speak and pay attention to others’ arguments to increase accountability and motivate employees. But don’t allow speakers to stray away from the topic at hand.
  7. Document decisions, take notes, and publish minutes after the meeting to document the results.

Online meetings: challenges and opportunities

Preparing and organizing a simple, productive meeting doesn’t look easy. That’s one reason for meeting management training and why online meetings are increasingly replacing traditional face-to-face meetings. High-quality broadcast solutions include tools that can make preparations much easier:

  • Pre-meeting chat
  • One-click invitations
  • Connecting remote colleagues
  • Automatic reminders
  • Presentation demonstrations
  • Recording and distribution

But along with this, the possibilities of online meetings impose additional responsibility on the organizer. Here are several aspects to pay attention to in preparation:

Reliability and compatibility. Connectivity issues should not affect the start time or progress of the meeting. A solution that all participants can use, regardless of the device or software installed, should be selected.

Visualization and data. The ability to show a presentation, share documents, or an image of your screen is a must for online meetings.

Documentation. To allow employees to refresh their memory of this or that part of the meeting at any time, it is useful to record the entire conversation and make the recording available to participants.

Confidentiality. As employees discuss important work issues and share documentation and other materials during an online meeting, it is very important to prevent leaks or unauthorized access to such information.

To summarize.

Determine if a meeting is necessary or if the issue can be resolved as a group. If you can’t do without a meeting, make a clear plan, speak strictly on point, and use modern software for productive discussion.

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