Meetings are an important part of any business, whether you’re an employee or an employer. With meetings taking up a large amount of a business year, unproductive meetings can damage worker morale and lose your business valuable revenue.
According to an estimate from Business Insider, unproductive meetings cost businesses $37 billion every year. It’s therefore important that employees can take something away from a meeting.
Whether you’re conducting an in-person meeting or a virtual one, here are some tips on how to make it more productive and engaging.
Plan ahead
If you want your employees to get the most out of your meetings, creating an agenda beforehand is a good idea. Giving your employees time to research the topic and consider their opinions will allow them to be more productive. People find it harder to discuss things when put on the spot, and letting them know the agenda prior to the meeting will make it easier to team members to give detailed insight.
Consider making a list of all the topics you want to go over at the meeting and then sending that list to everyone who will be at the meeting. Not only can agendas give people a chance to plan for the meeting, they can be a great way to keep that meeting organized and prevent it from being derailed.
Have a space specifically for meetings
Another way to ensure that meetings are productive is to create a space designed specifically for them. Having a room with all the equipment and space needed will ensure that employees are comfortable and prepared for the meeting.
Many modern offices in major cities have specially-designed meeting rooms. For example, there are serviced offices in Victoria, London that have large onsite meeting facilities with all of the requisite equipment, making these offices ideal backdrops for productive and engaging meetings.
Create a warm, friendly atmosphere
Just like letting employees plan for a meeting, creating a friendly atmosphere can put people at ease and make it easier for them to share their opinions and insights. Having a friendly company culture is essential for ensuring employees are happy and productive in their roles, and this culture should certainly be extended to business meetings.
Stick to the agenda but, if you make the meeting more of a casual chat between friends rather than a rigid, robotic conference, you’ll find that morale will improve and employees will be more switched on and more willing to share their ideas.
Send employees a summary and ask for feedback
Once the meeting is over, email all of your employees a summary of everything discussed there. This will remind those who were present of the topics discussed and inform everyone who wasn’t there what happened. Write and send this as soon as possible to keep everyone up to date with what was discussed and what needs to be done before the next meeting.
Similarly, asking for feedback will further encourage employees to share their opinions and give you an idea of how to improve these meetings further. Email everyone a survey and allow for anonymous feedback, and people will feel more comfortable with sharing ideas.
