Making business meetings more effective with collaboration tools
If there’s one thing SMEs can’t afford to do, it’s waste
hours in the day. As the old saying goes, time is money – and with limited
people resource to rely on, employees at smaller organisations can’t be tied up
on tasks that aren’t adding business value.
With that in mind, it’s not hard to see why meetings can be
an issue for many small businesses. The intentions behind calling a meeting are
nearly always good. But the reality is usually somewhat different. One team
member hasn’t seen the agenda, and the person with the slide deck somehow can’t
share their screen. Another’s dialling in from home, and keeps dropping out.
And that’s assuming you can all work out how to dial into the conference call
in the first place.
It’s a recipe for disaster, offering little business
benefit: almost half of the professionals in a survey by Wrike said that at
least some of the meetings they attend are a waste of time. Yet the majority of
respondents also said they attend over five meetings each week – and more
worrying still, those who attended over six meetings a week were more likely to
dislike their job. So, bad meetings aren’t just a waste of time. They could
also be damaging all-important employee engagement.
It’s
time to rethink meetings
Something has to give. Obviously, we can’t do away with
meetings altogether. But there is a clear impetus for businesses (especially
smaller organisations) to make meetings as streamlined and impactful as
possible – not to mention a little more interesting to attend.
Fortunately, there’s a number of ways businesses can go
about improving meetings. Including making them more inclusive, capturing
attention, getting everyone on the same page, and simplifying proceedings – as
we covered in our recent blog. But while these steps are effective, they all
rest on having the relevant business collaboration tools in place. Along with
new strategies and a shift in culture, the right tech is an important part of
improving the effectiveness of your meetings. Especially since, with the rise
of flexible workers and disparate teams, the need for remote meetings is only
likely to increase.
How
video conferencing can transform your meetings
One solution is to try and move away from relying on ‘voice
only’ conference calls and shift towards video conferencing. For a start, these
meetings will be more engaging. With everybody on a voice call, the chances are
that busy employees will be multi-tasking, with one ear on the conversation and
one eye on a spreadsheet. But during a video conference, everybody can stay
focused on their screen, where they can see (and be seen) by the rest of the
team.
Creating a ‘virtual meeting space’ in this way can keep
everyone on task, with the ability to share a whole desktop screen and display
webpages or documents. This sort of meeting can also facilitate a higher
quality of communication. On a voice conference, it’s all too easy to
misinterpret tone, miss a reaction, or talk over somebody and disrupt a train
of thought. With cloud-based video calls, it’s possible to gauge reactions more
effectively and respond appropriately. You’re in the room, without being in the
room.
Meanwhile, a simultaneous live chat function means
questions can be noted during the meetings, instead of being followed up on in
emails after. Best of all (for anybody who lives in fear of setting up a
conference dial in) easy-to-access virtual rooms can eliminate any hassle.
Instead of a clunky dial-in process, employees can simply click to join.
The SME
advantage for business change
As a smaller organisation, you might be sceptical – of
course all of these ideas sound helpful, but aren’t they costly and time
consuming to implement? Fortunately, with applications hosted in the cloud,
nothing could be further from the truth. New software suites can be embraced
simply and with minimal start-up costs. And, unlike larger organisations, SMEs
are actually at a distinct advantage when it comes to shaking up their meeting
culture – because they’re usually agile enough to implement change in a relatively
small period of time.
Video is by no means the only business collaboration tool you can use to improve the quality of your meetings – mobile devices can also have a role to play, while collaborative team workspaces can keep everybody on track with ongoing projects and documents. But it’s definitely a good place to start.
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