— The PLACEmaking blog

The 6 types of modern workplace meetings - and how emerging trends may change them in the future

Author

Alison White and Fintan Burke

Date

June 30, 2022

Decision making, progress reporting, problem solving and more – how are different kinds of meetings developing as new working styles and technologies become more common?

01

Decision making

Often confidential or commercially sensitive involving management decision making affecting direction, investment and workforce planning, performance reports, risk assessments and advisory presentations – can be a time drain of those attending for specific agenda items only. Traditionally face to face, held in private, isolated rooms.

Emerging trends:
Core participants still prefer face to face but reporting and presentations increasingly virtual. Benefits –number of meeting attendees reduced therefore host locations more flexible. Agenda better time managed, enabling wider perspectives through richer sources of internal reporting and external advisory presentations.

02

Status updates or Town Halls

Objective for management to communicate concise, accurate and important messages to large groups of people. Planned well in advance, typically held in largest space available on site or off site. Scale of event tends to result in often pre-leaked one way messaging, facilitating limited workforce response.

Emerging trends:
Increasing focus on simultaneous virtual messaging to distributed smaller groups: less formal and focusing on workshops, brainstorming presented information and developing output ideas to feed back to senior management. Benefits – easier to co-ordinate, less formal more frequent creative dialogue emphasising on the value of collective participation, creative thinking and agreement of a way forward.

03

Progress reporting

Objective to compare progress against target objectives, focusing on understanding the ‘why’ behind progress indicators with emphasis on managers identifying potential +/- and making adjustments Typically reviewing progress reports in weekly or monthly departmental management meetings.

Emerging trends:
Greater emphasis on monitoring real time data, preparing for group working sessions focused on sharing expertise, model options and assess potential impact. Benefits – more flexibility for managers to participate from multiple locations, greater emphasis on managers workshop activity in place of a largely outdated management ‘meetings’.

04

Team Building

Objective is to focus on team well-being and maintaining healthy working relationships. Typically would have been a ‘start the week’ large office based group meeting, supplemented with periodic ‘away-day’ events. The focus on whole team meetings means co-ordination with full time and part time attendees complex and contributions by everyone in public forum difficult.

Emerging trends:
With increased hybrid working, more of these activities are hosted online. This enables greater participation, reduced formality and greater ‘buddy’ support. Pandemic lock down experience has highlighted the need to focus more on the ‘welfare’ role of managers and the payback is noticeable improvements in team connectivity and performance.

05

Problem Solving

Objective is for a group of people coming together to understand why a problem has emerged, understand the potential impact and make recommendations for mitigation actions that will solve the problem. Typically this might have been regarded as a ‘special project’ with the team collocating in an allocated office space, often achieved by shunting occupying teams.

Emerging trends:
Remote access enables team members to be drawn from multiple locations with intensive time together pre booked Temporary use of high quality creative project space is therefore sufficient and could be hosted on-site or in a digitally connected convenient off site location is acceptable.

06

Innovative brainstorming

Focused on optimising people’s time, talents and energies to rapidly explore ideas, map new solutions and appraise the benefits and risks associated with key outcomes from this energising event. Typically this activity might have been conducted in meeting rooms: often these rooms are somewhat generic and uninspiring, without the flexible technologies to facilitate positive brainstorming activities.

Emerging trends:
These are the key activities that benefit from face to face whilst also encouraging those that can’t travel to join digitally. Temporary use of high quality creative space with furniture, materials, equipment and technologies that can be reconfigured to meet users needs is key. Could be hosted on-site but linked to social catch-ups would suggest off site location is more acceptable.