Companies To Tame Meetings
Employees made to stand up, shut up
BY Stephanie Armour
USA TODAY
To boost the productivity of meetings, companies are turning to meeting planners, how-to books and management classes that focus on improving workplace gatherings.
Some are making meetings standing-only - using aching knees and arches to signal it's time to finish.
But many employers still are struggling when it comes to running meetings well.
A 2005 report by the Society for Human Resource Management, which notes that unproductive meetings are a costly drain on businesses, says hallmarks of bad meetings include having no agenda, too many participants and lack of training for those who lead meetings.
"It's such a novelty for us to interface with actual human beings instead of our keyboards, headsets or monitors that we've practically forgotten how to communicate one-on-one," said Rachel Weingarten in New York, an author and president of GTK Marketing Group.
Strategy Discussion
What some companies are doing to improve meetings:
• Weekly team meetings were lasting hours at MMI Associates, a marketing firm in Raleigh, N.C., so four months ago, the company adopted several changes to streamline get-togethers. Now, meeting organizers put together an agenda before the meeting and pick one employee to be a taskmaster to keep everyone on topic. They also take minutes for anyone who misses the meeting, and everyone stands during the meetings.
• At BusinessEdge Solutions, a business and technology consulting firm based in East Brunswick, N.J., several tactics have been tried to shorten meetings. At monthly management meetings that can take eight hours, steps have included limiting the number of participants and banning the use of cell phones and personal digital assistants.
At meetings of the information technology department, staffers also have tried requiring everyone to stand to keep the meetings brief.
• Joyce Gioia, president of Greensboro, N.C.-based management consultants The Herman Group, made changes after hearing complaints from staff about too many meetings.
Those steps included scheduling some standing-only meetings and instituting an agenda with a timeline and timekeeper. She's also had the people who complained run the meeting.
"They saw how hard it was," Gioia says. "If you're not careful, meetings get longer and longer. We had to get very vigilant."
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