{"id":22348,"date":"2020-01-15T11:02:18","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T11:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/?p=22348"},"modified":"2020-01-15T11:02:21","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T11:02:21","slug":"work-meetings-how-to-make-them-more-effective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/work-meetings-how-to-make-them-more-effective\/","title":{"rendered":"Work Meetings: How to Make Them More Effective?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fusion-fullwidth fullwidth-box fusion-fullwidth-1  fusion-parallax-none nonhundred-percent-fullwidth\" style=\"border-bottom-width: 0px;border-top-width: 0px;border-bottom-style: solid;border-top-style: solid;padding-bottom:20px;padding-top:20px;padding-left:;padding-right:;\"><style type=\"text\/css\" scoped=\"scoped\">.fusion-fullwidth-1 {\r\n                            padding-left: px !important;\r\n                            padding-right: px !important;\r\n                        }<\/style><div class=\"fusion-row\"><\/div><\/div><div class=\"fusion-title title fusion-title-center fusion-title-size-one\"><div class=\"title-sep-container title-sep-container-left\"><div class=\"title-sep sep-double sep-solid\" style=\"border-color:#d1af94;\"><\/div><\/div><h1 class=\"title-heading-center\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #d1af94;\">How to improve work meetings<\/span><\/p>\n<\/h1><div class=\"title-sep-container title-sep-container-right\"><div class=\"title-sep sep-double sep-solid\" style=\"border-color:#d1af94;\"><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Meetings are a practical way to allow employees to work together, share progress, ideas and connect with each other<\/strong>. They can be formal or informal and happen face-to-face or through electronic devices (phone, computers, etc). Business meetings can be extremely effective, however, <strong>when they are not properly run, they can be inefficient and a waste of time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In fact, a 2017 Harvard Business Review study showed that <strong>70% of managers stated that meetings are \u201cunproductive and inefficient\u201d because they stop them from doing their work<\/strong>. Other Microsoft research has demonstrated that <strong>work meetings are one of the things that most waste workers\u2019 time<\/strong>. These studies clearly show how urgent it is to find strategies to improve meetings. Thus, companies, the workforce, managers, and leaders need to work to ensure they are successful.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">First, <strong>it is important that meetings are purpose focused, direct and factual<\/strong>. They <strong>must follow a plan<\/strong>, with all the important points that need to be discussed. This plan needs to be shared with all meeting participants. The main problem, is that a lot of times, workers get off-topic and lose focus. This does not help employees with their work\/tasks and only waste their time.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">However, more than focused meetings, <strong>it is essential that they are scheduled so that employees have time to prepare them<\/strong>. Thus, participants should book an hour to start and finish. This way, <strong>employees will organise and prioritise the discussion<\/strong>, since they only have this moment to work on it. In addition, it is important to remember that <strong>if meetings are taking too long, breaks are fundamental to allow employees to rest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Moreover, <strong>only attendees who can have a contribution to the subject being discussed<\/strong>, i.e. employees working on it or those who can help, <strong>should be invited<\/strong>. This will prevent others from wasting time. Also, <strong>when there are too many participants, it is difficult to let everyone contribute in the meeting.<\/strong> However, it allows people to share ideas\/suggestions, which makes them more engaged and less likely to be distracted so, it is important than everyone present at the meeting can contribute.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">So far, we have discussed how to properly run meetings, but <strong>it is also very important to know how to assess whether meetings are necessary<\/strong>. There are <strong>other ways that allow employees to work together, without the need to meet in person and that can be equally effective and timesaving<\/strong>. For instance, some tools let workers share and work on the same document in real-time. This way, no one needs to meet to make corrections or give feedback. <strong>Video conferences, calls, chats or even emails are efficient ways to communicate with others quickly and without the need to be in the same place<\/strong>. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that some situations\/problems are resolved more quickly and efficiently face-to-face.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Regardless of whether meetings take place face-to-face or through electronic devices, <strong>it is crucial that the next steps are discussed<\/strong>. This means delegating tasks, setting deadlines, deciding when the next meeting will be held, etc. All things considered, work meetings are crucial to working effectively.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\"><u>References:<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">How to Run a More Effective Meeting, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/guides\/business\/how-to-run-an-effective-meeting\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">The Secret To Better Meetings, July 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbescoachescouncil\/2018\/07\/16\/the-secret-to-better-meetings\/#72425d344c62\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forbes<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">5 tips to improve small business meetings, August 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365\/growth-center\/resources\/5-tips-to-improve-small-business-meetings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meetings are a practical way to allow employees to work together, share progress, ideas and connect with each other. They can be formal or informal and happen face-to-face or through electronic devices (phone, computers, etc). Business meetings can be extremely effective, however, when they are not properly run, they can be inefficient and a waste [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":22352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","myguten_meta_block_field":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22350,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22348\/revisions\/22350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strammer.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}