Stay Connected

Tips and Tricks to conduct effective Meetings

Work from Home has had us all attend more virtual meetings a day than we can count. Considering the current situation they have come across to be most effective when it comes to keeping yourself and everyone connected on what is going on, on a daily basis. 

From a company standpoint, you want to be in touch with your team and have them feel that even working from home, where Face to Face sitdown or discussion is not possible, their thoughts and suggestions are as much valued and appreciated as they were before.

Video Conferencing can not only help you smoothly connect with your peers but also manage to lift everyone’s spirit if done correctly. We at SKS Enterpprises take pride in ourselves in having strong communication and transparency within our team. Hence, here we are hoping that these tips and tricks will help your team too with effective virtual communication.

We are going to break down an effective meeting in the following 5 stages.

Stick to a Schedule:

• Organize team calls that are recurring so everyone adapts to the new routine. Ever-changing schedules are hard to keep up with and can be overwhelming which is a big No-No.
• A routine, in this case, is more efficient as it helps everyone stay composed and not go haywire with the new change in their work life. 
• Schedule the calls in such a way that it does not in any way affect your team’s productivity. We have found that two team calls, one at the beginning of the day and one at the end to be most effective.

Assemble an Agenda

• Agendas are great as they help everyone know exactly what is to be discussed and follow the meeting better.
• We also suggest sharing the agenda with the team for anyone who wishes to add any points that they want to discuss during the meeting, this will help the team feel more inclusive.

On a positive note:

• We advise not to directly jump straight to business. Start the call on a lighter note, have a bit of small talk, share some pleasantries, and then ease the team into the work conversation. We all know that All work and No Play makes Jack a dull boy.
• The calls at no point should become monotonous, keep everyone’s spirits up by keeping the conversation light and as productive as possible.

Practice the Protocol:

• As we covered earlier that two calls a day have proven to be most effective for us, this is how we ensure that it stays that way:

Fresh Start:

The first call happens at the beginning of the following workday where each member of the team covers their individual agendas and To Do’s that they have planned for themselves, this helps everyone have a clear plan for the day and also keeps the team updated on each other.

See you tomorrow:

For the End of the Day call, we ask our team to note down what were the Highlights of the day and what Blockers they faced. This helps greatly as everyone gets to share their day and even get helpful suggestions to tackle a particular scenario they must be facing a problem with. 

• Since having a lot of people on the call at the same time can be chaotic, we suggest having one person lead the conversation, cover whatever updates they want to share and then tag their teammate to continue the conversation and so on and so forth, this makes sure that there is no talking over each other and everyone gets time in the spotlight.

Watch the Clock:

• We highly suggest making sure that the calls do not lag on unnecessarily as it only wastes time and in turn affects the team’s productivity.
• Having a 20-30 minutes call, twice a day, can effectively cover everything. The calls should definitely not feel like a chore that we unwillingly have to do while being quarantined.

Some tools we use for virtual meetings: Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, Workplace, Namaste

We hope this helps you and your team stay in touch, do let us know how you and your team stay in touch in the comment section below. See you soon with our next blog, Until then, Stay Home. Stay Safe.