Tip of the Week: 3 Ways to Make Online Meetings More Productive

Online meetings and other methods of remote collaboration have grown significantly in popularity, especially over the past few months. Many may still feel, however, that they aren’t able to accomplish as much during these meetings. We’re sharing three tips to help up the productivity of your next remote session to help correct these feelings.

Identify an Agenda, and a Moderator to Enforce It

The first step to having a productive meeting is to have a general idea of what will be discussed in the time allotted for it. Not only will this help to minimize tangents and other conversations that aren’t conducive to the meeting’s goal, sharing it ahead of time gives the participants a chance to organize their thoughts.

Once the meeting is underway, you also need to make sure that it stays on the track that your agenda set for it. This means that it needs to be somebody’s responsibility to guide the meeting’s trajectory. Giving one of the participants the capability to mute and unmute other participants as needed is a useful option to consider, if need be, along with these responsibilities.

Selecting the Solution

There are a lot (repeat for emphasis) of collaboration and remote meeting options available right now, so you have plenty to consider implementing to support your operations. While we aren’t going to make any specific recommendations, we want to go over a few key considerations to keep in mind as you weigh your options:

• What functions and features will your remote meetings require?
• How many people does the conferencing platform need to support?
• Can your other tools and solutions play a role, either via integrations or concurrent use?

With the answers to these questions in mind, you’ll be better able to select the option that fits your precise needs.

Compare Notes

Finally, when your meeting is over, it helps if everyone contributes to the meeting’s record. This helps prevent steps from being missed and can clarify everyone’s goals after the fact. By sending this summary to all involved once it is prepared you can ensure that your meeting has concluded with everyone (almost literally) on the same page.

What have you done to make the most of your remote meetings? Share your tips in the comments!