Stop Wasting Time in Bad Meetings

At Glassdoor, we recently unveiled new meeting rules, aka “Meetiquette,” to maintain Glassdoor’s scrappy start-up feel as we grow at a rapid pace. Our leadership implemented this policy to help us stay on the same page, be more effective and waste less time in unnecessary meetings. What is “Meetiquette,” you ask? Basically, it’s etiquette guidelines for meetings. Here are the four categories: 1. Another meeting? Before you add yet another meeting to your teammate’s calendars, think about this: Is this a decision meeting or an update meeting? A decision meeting is where you need your team in the same room to make a key decision, talk something out or brainstorm. An update meeting, on the other hand, is where you simply go over results or numbers with teammates. If you just have to share results or a quick update with your team, send an email instead. Don’t waste their time and force them to sit through your Excel show-and-tell. Another thing to consider is meeting length. Can you cut the time in half? More often than not, you can. Think about how long you’d normally schedule the meeting for and then cut by 50%. By following our guidelines to make meetings more efficient, you’ll only need half the time, anyway. 2. Pre-meeting rules We built a few meeting best practices into our new “Meetiquette” rules. First, invite as few people as possible. There’s nothing worse than half of the attendees feeling like they have no reason to be there – they’ll probably just stare at their phones and computers the whole time. We try not to hold meetings without agendas. We also encourage meeting organizers to place a meeting agenda in the body of the calendar invitation. This way, you have set topics to cover and waste less time. Clearly state your meeting goals and what you hope to accomplish. In your agenda, alert attendees about any prep work they’ll need to accomplish before arriving. Lastly, send any meeting materials they’ll need at least 24 hours in advance to ensure everyone shows up prepared. 3. Meetiquette Start your meetings on time and try to finish early – nothing makes people happier than having 15 minutes of their day back! Stay on task and take any tangents offline. Pro tip: avoid multitasking in meetings. Create a no-tech zone – that’s right, ask everyone to put away phones and laptops. While this isn’t always possible – for example, some people take notes on their computers – it definitely helps to keep the group focused and on task. Lastly, clean up before you leave! As meeting organizer, it’s your job to clean up trash, leftover plates or cups, organize wires and erase the whiteboard. Be respectful and clean up after yourself. 4. After the meeting Be sure to follow-up after a meeting. Send meeting notes to attendees and lay out clear next steps if you need them to take action. Highlight any action items and assigned tasks to ensure that people know what you need from them. How to get the word out So, now that you have these new meeting rules, how do you implement them at your organization? Announce the change at a company-wide huddle or all hands. Walk through the new rules and why it’s so important that all groups implement these changes. Then, send a follow-up email reminding everyone about the rules and encouraging them to participate in making your meetings more effective company-wide. Reiterate the new meeting rules and tell them whom to contact with questions. Lastly, hang posters around your office. At Glassdoor, we have our “Meetiquette” rules hanging in our conference rooms and meeting spaces to remind everyone that we should all strive to host better meetings.