The Record - Issue 21: Summer 2021

90 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om I NT E R V I EW W hen a meeting experience is inefficient and unsatisfactory, people’s time is wasted, engagement is affected, and productivity is hit. Meeting technology provider Decisions has been working to make meetings more efficient and effective. It has developed fea- tures that can be used within Microsoft Teams, including structured agendas and a Speak Now capability, which allows meeting participants to enter the discussion in an orderly and uninter- rupted manner. On top of its quest for efficiency, Decisions has now shifted its focus towards increasing the quality of meetings and the back-end processes, with the goal of boosting participant engage- ment and getting better output. And it is doing this through its newMeeting Engagement Score. “It’s not just about getting to a level where you have fewer meetings or are more efficient, it’s also about actually changing people’s behaviour around meetings,” says Jørgen Solberg, founder and CEO of Decisions. “That’s what the Meeting Engagement Score is about: making sure that we nudge people towards, for instance, coming pre- pared to a meeting.” Solberg and his team built an algorithm based on behavioural economic science to tell users if a team is prepared and the likelihood of having a quality meeting with the proper outcome. The score rates groups of users on a scale from zero to 100 based on their preparedness. But what does this look like for the user? “Users can see a score associated with the agenda of a meeting,” explains Solberg. “If, for example, that score is 40, which might be lower than usual, they can ask themselves if they are ready to make that decision or whether it needs more thought and preparation before designat- ing a whole meeting to it. “There are many factors involved in calculat- ing that score. For example, did someone upload the presentation the night before so that no one had chance to look at it? How much have you engaged with the agenda and the communica- tion around the agenda in advance of the meet- ing? Does the agenda have enough context for people can effectively engage with it?” The score can also be used to track a meet- ing series, for example, and show how meeting engagement is changing over time. “If team leaders or meeting administrators notice the score deteriorating over time, it gives them the opportunity to understand why partici- pants are losing focus and rectify it,” says Solberg. Decisions CEO Jørgen Solberg discusses the firm’s new focus on improving meeting engagement among participants and driving organisations towards a better meeting culture A perfect score BY E L LY YAT E S - ROB E R T S “You need to keep things fresh to keep people engaged”