Elly Yates-Roberts |
Norms and expectations of workplaces are rapidly changing, and nothing has changed more than meeting culture. Meetings can now be completely virtual, in-person or a hybrid of the two, mirroring the transformation entire organisations are undergoing.
Meetings are essential to every business, but how they are run and how people feel about them vary widely. However, with this digital frontier comes opportunity for better and more inclusive meetings.
Without the assistance of a meeting solution software like Decisions for Microsoft, meetings can be unstructured, disorganised and, quite frankly, frustrating. Even with a meeting software, how does one know that consecutive meetings are trending for the better? Are meetings inclusive and fostering creativity and great outcomes? How are meeting leaders measuring their successes and improving?
Often, meeting topics, agendas and the general tone can defer to that of whoever called the meeting. However, to improve meetings and make them more inclusive to every team member invited, we realised that more data was needed.
We first began our quest for data-driven meeting improvement with our proprietary Meeting Engagement Score, a one-of-a-kind algorithm that evaluates meeting preparation and agenda quality. As your engagement score grows higher, you’ll start to see more discussion, greater insights and better decisions.
But what about after the meeting? How do you score the meeting itself? A complementary feature to the Meeting Engagement Score is Decisions’ new Meeting Feedback Score, an anonymous rating system that allows attendees to rate the effectiveness of any Teams meeting.
At the end of each meeting, attendees are prompted to rate the meeting’s effectiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. Meeting leaders, executives, management and admin can use these scores to measure how their meetings are going and any improvements. A positively trending Meeting Feedback Score indicates that meetings are becoming more efficient, inclusive and collaborative.
Inclusivity is important in the workplace. Not only is it essential to ensure your team feels safe, valued and heard, but it will help keep employee morale high and ultimately lead to higher job performances. Blind spots that arise when traditionally marginalised voices in the workplace are not heard can be costly and are often avoidable if an organisation strives for inclusivity. Rating your meetings and incorporating the feedback are small but mighty steps to start your journey toward a happier business.
Jørgen Solberg is the founder and CEO of Decisions
This article was originally published in the Autumn 2021 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.