Holding weekly meetings is a great way to get your team together and make sure everyone is on track. This is a great time for your staff to connect, provide updates on products, assign new tasks, and ask for assistance ─ if needed. However, it’s easy for staff meetings to get off track and quickly become unproductive, when conversation transitions to the weekend and other personal matters, rather than staying focused on work.

5 Ways to Keep Meetings
at a More Productive Length

Need a little help getting your staff to stay on task at your weekly meetings? Use the following five tips to keep your meetings short and productive:

1. Hold Standing Meetings: It’s easy to lose track of time when sitting around the conference room table. However, everyone is much more aware of how long the meeting has been going on when they’re standing.
2. Always Have an Agenda: Veering off-topic isn’t too difficult when you don’t really know why you’re meeting in the first place. Create an agenda beforehand and send it out to all attendees, so everyone comes prepared. When you have designated topics to discuss, it’s much easier to stay focused.
3. Skip Monday Meetings: At first glance, Monday morning may seem like the obvious choice for a staff meeting, as it can serve as a kickoff to a new week. However, this isn’t really the best idea as people are still recovering from their weekends, so it’s inevitable they’re going want to use this time to share personal updates rather than business ones. Move the meeting to Tuesday and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the difference.
4. Avoid Starting Late: While it’s natural to decide to start the meeting a few minutes late when you’re still waiting for people to arrive ─ resist the urge, as delaying for stragglers punishes those who arrive on time. After a few times of coming in late and interrupting the meeting, the chronically late arrivers will start being more punctual.
5. Keep the Invite List Small: Is there anyone on your standard staff meeting invite list that isn’t actually part of your team? Sometimes meetings become too large because unnecessary attendees are invited, which wastes everyone’s time. Review your invite list to make sure you’re only including those who absolutely must attend.

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