“Docket has quickly become essential to doing our best work at Studio Science. Meetings are critically important to the services we provide clients, and having a platform dedicated to making meetings more effective, collaborative, and structured is game changing.”
Run Fun and Effective Meetings with Docket
Docket is a meeting-focused workspace for collaborative agenda creation, decision documentation, and action item tracking.
Try Docket with your meetings for free.
Team Meetings
Meetings can be the worst if managed poorly. They can take up too much of your time and can be extremely unproductive and counterintuitive to its very purpose. We’ve all sat through that team meeting that seems to go on forever and when it’s finally over you complain to your coworkers about how “that could have just been an email.” It gets even more complex when you rely on technology or conference meeting apps such as GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom Meeting to add in remote team members or clients to the call.
But meetings aren’t supposed to be that way! They should be a creative environment where everyone can get together and discuss their ideas and then head back to their desks fired up and ready to work. Your technology should seamlessly work together instead of stalling the meeting by 15 minutes while you get everything up and running.
Whether you’re looking to have a more productive meeting that enables you to solve challenges with employees or clients, build a weekly team meeting agenda template, upgrade your meeting scheduler app, or come up with out of the box meeting ideas for video conferencing, you have the power to make your meetings awesome again. You might be surprised by how much more actively engaged your staff is when you lead them with effective team meetings. Successful staff meetings means they’ll be more productive and creative, and you’ll likely see an improvement in overall morale in the workplace.
Want to learn more about how to have a great staff meeting? Let’s dive in!
The Challenges of Remote Meetings
Today’s business world is becoming more and more remote. We are able to bring our laptops anywhere and our phones are always connected. You don’t have to be in the conference room to have a conference call anymore. It’s become standard to offer work from home and telecommute options for in-house staff and it’s much appreciated within the workforce.
However, as much as this is a vast improvement over how meetings used to be run, it also comes with its own set of challenges. You have to make sure everyone shows up at the right time even though they’re in different time zones, let everyone know what the Microsoft Teams meeting dial in information is (or how to join Microsoft Teams meeting as guest), and coordinate all of your business meeting apps into one centralized, accessible, location. Having all this ready can often mean that it takes you just as long, if not longer, to prepare for productive team meetings than it does to actually be IN the meeting!
Having the right meeting management software such as Docket is the first step in how to improve team meetings, especially for remote employees. There are a variety of conference meetings apps available as well as free meeting agenda and minutes software to help keep your sessions organized. You’re probably familiar with GoToMeeting meeting apps that allow for all parties to dial into a conference line and the presenter can share their screen for a presentation, training, or tutorial. You can also join Microsoft Teams meeting by phone. A free group meeting app is easy if you don’t host many meetings, but you might be missing some great features without a paid version and while they may provide video conferencing tools to run the meeting, there are many other tools needed for a successful meeting which they cannot provide.
Agendas for Team Meetings
Before every meeting, sending out an agenda to all attendees is the easiest way to make sure everything will get discussed, and nothing extra. With a meeting agenda app like Docket, you can also add notes during the meeting and send out a custom recap afterwards.
If you’re creating an agenda for first meeting with new boss or first team meeting speech, you’ll want to include time for everyone to introduce themselves, and for the new boss to share their experience and goals for the team. This first team meeting agenda can be as minimal or as detailed as you like such as including all staff meeting topics.
If you prefer a simple meeting agenda, you may just want to include the high level bullet points to be discussed in the team meeting. When you get into the meeting, the person responsible for that bullet point can expand and offer more detail. Be careful that your team doesn’t get off track with this method, though. Without much structure in the team meeting agenda, it can be easy to go on too long for one specific topic and run out of time to discuss things further down on the list.
If you’re having an all staff meeting agenda, you’ll probably need to plan for more time. Depending on the purpose of the meeting, you may need each of the department managers to get up and address the group, or it may just be the CEO talking to everyone at once. If necessary, you can even break into smaller groups for five minute brainstorming sessions and then come back and have one person from each group share their ideas.
If this is something you plan to do regularly, you may even wish to develop a team meeting agenda sample with points to be discussed in team meetings. Then you can just copy the new information from the page navigation by pulling up your agenda templates in Docket without having to rewrite every time.
Regardless of how you do it, a productive meeting agenda is a great way to keep your sessions on track and on time so your staff can get back to creating great work.
Scheduling Team Meetings
When it comes to planning a team meeting, you’ve got to have the right meeting management platform. This will vary from team to team but ultimately, it should allow you to view everyone’s calendar, contact them, and allow them to suggest other times. Ideally, you’ll also be able to share weekly meeting agenda ideas and get everyone’s input. A good meeting management app will incorporate your other business apps and allow for seamless use across all attendees.
The best way to excite your team is to learn how to make staff meetings more engaging. There are a variety of cool meeting ideas on the internet, but some of the most effective are ones that incorporate your team into the process of the meeting. Instead of having one person stand in front of the room and talk for an hour, let that person pose a question to the group and then they each take a few minutes to brainstorm and present.
For first team meeting ideas, give everyone a chance to introduce themselves and talk about what they do. It’s a good way for people to interact with members of another department that they normally wouldn’t talk to in a day. You never know what kind of creative ideas can come from a copy editor talking to the Director of Information Technology once they discover their shared love of precise spreadsheets.
When you take the time to develop team meeting ideas, topics for team meetings at work, and even themes for staff meetings, you’ll likely see a higher “Yes” RSVPs when you schedule meetings. Your staff will enjoy meetings more, and they’ll be happier, more productive sessions.
Video Conferencing for Team Meetings
One thing that many clients appreciate in our telecommuting world, is the ability to see each other, even if you’re not all in the same room. Depending on the industry, clients may not trust that you are who you say you are online. Using a video team meeting app lets them see who and where you are so they know you’re the real deal.
The best video team meeting software will be easy to use, connect to any device, and offer a crystal clear image for all attendees. Gone are the days of pixelated images, lagging audio to visuals, and dropped calls. If your video conferencing software isn’t up to snuff, your clients will likely begin to question the value of your products or services.
Video conferencing has also seen a rise in popularity during the hiring process. When you’re looking for a new candidate and you receive an application for someone who lives 1,000 miles away, you don’t have to completely dismiss it. Not only are more offices accepting remote workers, even if they’re planning to relocate to your city, you can still get the interview process underway using video calls. Sure, phone calls work well too, but with a video call you can see the person’s face, watch their reactions, and get a better sense for how their personality will fit in among your current staff and company culture.
Have Better Team Meetings with Docket
When you’re ready to recharge your team meetings, look no further than Docket. This meeting agenda software does it all. You can develop a team meeting (Microsoft calendar or Google calendar integration), create a weekly operations meeting agenda template, and even come up with workplace meeting topics all in one spot. Your entire staff can have access to the template so they can add points to the agenda, takes notes, or send a recap after it’s all over. You’ll have a more productive meeting, meaning there’s more time to create the great work you’ve just discussed. No more exhausting two-hour meetings that get nothing accomplished. No more cranky employees who had to skip lunch. No more conference room boredom! You’ll be surprised how much easier your workday is when you use Docket. Get started for free today and start making company meetings more enjoyable.