How Can I Creatively Restructure Our Weekly Team Meetings? Seeking Your Ideas!

Hello all,

I am working as an HR professional in an IT company. Every week, we have a team meeting that lasts for 1 hour, including presentations, team discussions, and so on. Recently, my boss expressed a desire to restructure the meeting as it has been feeling monotonous. He is looking for something new and creative and has tasked me with reaching out to the team for suggestions.

I would appreciate your help in providing me with an email format and content that I can use to request suggestions from the team.

Thank you.

Reevaluating the Purpose of Meetings

Simply state what you have told us and seek ideas from the team. We do not attend your meetings, so we are not in a position to make suggestions. However, the more important point here is that if the meetings are becoming boring, you need to ask the question: why are you meeting? It would appear you can achieve more by sending around a weekly round-up email with points of interest and then having a short 15-minute full team catch-up meeting once a month to discuss a specific matter.

We have had many discussions here on CiteHR regarding the futility and time-wasting nature of meetings. Use the research box at the top of the page to reference previous discussions. Don't have meetings for the sake of having a meeting. Every employee's time is valuable and needs to be utilized doing work that adds to the company's bottom line. If you did a quick survey, I'll bet not one of them wants to attend this meeting anyway.

Reevaluating Meeting Structures

Greetings! You have raised quite a relevant and valid point for discussion on this forum. I fully endorse the viewpoint of Mr. John from Melbourne:

"Don’t have meetings for the sake of having a meeting. Every employee’s time is valuable and needs to be utilized doing work that adds to the company’s bottom line. If you did a quick survey, I’ll bet not one of them wants to attend this meeting anyway."

It's very true that employees' time is quite valuable. No one wants to waste their time in regular meetings. Seasoned and mature employees want to focus on their work and targets.

Frequent suggestions from employees will not necessarily lead to improvement, as everyone will provide solutions based on their own wisdom, which may not be useful for the company management. The company may have to make a final decision based on its own constraints and resources.

Yes, definitely, you may consider training and development of the employees as an alternative to improve their productivity.

Regards,
Optimus Consultants
[Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons]

I fully agree with the above-mentioned remarks and suggestions by Dinesh, Johns, Optimus Consultant, and Aparajita. However, I have some suggestions that you may use according to your requirements:

- Set daily milestones of work: Discuss yesterday's milestones achieved, problems, and solutions.
- Celebrate and wish birthdays and special days.
- Hold brief sessions on employees' biggest achievements, hurdles, and life lessons.
- Initiate some employee engagement activities such as art of living, skills improvement, knowledge sharing, etc.
- Discuss sales and service targets and achievements, mostly in terms of facts and figures.
- Consider assigning someone for presentations on topics related to your company's work and profile, market research, etc.
- Keep changing the daily agenda of the meetings.

Thanks