Studies show the average office employee spends over five hours each week participating in meetings and over four hours preparing for them. That’s more than an average entire work day devoted to meetings every week! If you’re in management, did you realize you spend an average of 12 to 14 hours a week in meetings? 

We’ve Got To Stop Meeting Like This

How can you or your staff be fully productive if you are spending that much of your work week simply planning for or participating in meetings?

Here are a few tips you might want to try to help make the meetings more effective the next time you are the organizer:

What Can You Do Before the Meeting?

Create an agenda! Make sure it has a clear purpose and pertinent discussion points. You can also send it out before the meeting to the people who will be in attendance then you’ll be able to gather valuable input before the meeting.

What Can You Do During the Meeting?

Always start and finish your meetings on time and stick to planned break times and durations as well. Consider standing during the meeting to help keep it short and ban cell phones and other small non-essential electronic devices to keep everyone focused. Keep different portions of the meeting timed and stay on task and on topic.

What Can You Do After the Meeting?

Consider adopting multiple meeting structures for example a short daily check-in and a weekly tactical meeting. Always be considerate of others when scheduling and planning.

Effective Meeting Strategies

What types of meetings do you usually participate in (client meetings, team meetings, committee meetings, business partner meeting, board meetings, HOA meetings…)? How could they be structured and planned to make better use of everyone’s time? 

If you want to learn more about how to hold and participate in more Effective Meetings, join us and learn more strategies around this important productivity topic on our next monthly “It’s About Time Virtual Productivity Program” webinar – Tuesday, July 2nd starting at 8am PDT. We promise it will be time well spent!