With the spread of social distancing due to COVID-19, most offices are now working from home or using online meeting software as alternatives to in-person meetings. This is totally fine and it’s definitely more cost effective than holding an event at a convention center or private venue!
In fact, according to a survey conducted last year by Meeting Guru, nearly half (47%) of respondents said they would rather meet remotely than have no meeting coverage at all. One reason why people prefer distance meetings is because many feel that they can get better quality content by interacting with others online instead of via phone or face-to-face.
That makes sense since we’re talking about sharing ideas and concepts here! But how do you organize these remote meetings? That’s where things can become tricky.
Most office-based teams use what’s called a “one time only” meeting format to hold their next gathering. You invite everyone out for a specific time slot, and then it ends. Unfortunately, this isn’t ideal for creating recurring events like weekly team meetings, conference calls, or virtual training programs.
Here’s why…
1) It’s too hard to create one time only meetings when there are so many potential times every week, month, or quarter.
The second type of meeting is called a recurring meeting or a zoom meeting. These meetings are typically scheduled every few days, or once a week, but they do not have an end date.
What makes these meetings different from one-time only events is that you will need to invite everyone back into the event repeatedly until it becomes less frequent. This can be done manually through email or via software.
Many companies use their phone apps as a way to manage this. For example, if your company uses Google Hangouts then you could just include that in the invitation. You would simply add people directly onto the video conference instead of having them join as guests.
This article will talk about some tips and tricks for hosting successful recurring meetings using technology.
A recurring meeting can be set up in two ways. You can have the meeting repeat at a specific time or you can choose to make it automatic where the meeting is always one week after the last meeting.
To do this, you need to select the “Recur” option under the Meeting Settings section of the conference. Then, you will want to pick either One Week or Each Monday as the date for the next meeting.
Once these settings are done, then you can start the meeting by going into the Scheduling tab and selecting Start a Meeting. Then, depending on what type of meeting you wanted, you can invite people or not! (More about that here.)
If you would like to add some additional features to your meetings, you can also use the Reminder feature which allows you to get email reminders of the meeting.
The next step is to create a recurrent meeting. This can be done in two ways: through an app or via web browser tooling.
You will first need to choose which type of meeting you would like to have. There are three main types: conference, chat, and team.
For this article we will go into more detail about how to set up a conference room meeting. But keep in mind that there are 2x as many potential settings for these meetings!
We will also talk about some apps that make it easy to create and manage your meetings. No matter what kind of device you use, they all work similarly.
The next step is to create a new recurring meeting. You can do this by clicking “Create a Meeting” in your All Messages or Conversation view.
You will then choose the day, time, and location of the meeting. Click “Continue” to connect with the rest of the people attending.
Once you have all the attendees connected, you can click “Start a Meeting” to begin the chat. Spread out the invite and see who joins!
Reminder: If someone does not get an invitation, they can access the meeting using Google Plus as a browser. Just go to meeeting.google.com and enter the link in here to join.
Google plus has some great tools for organizing meetings as well. For example, you can add Who Can Attend which helps keep things organized.
One of the things that can get tedious with group meetings is having to change the time or location every few weeks. With this article, we will discuss some ways to eliminate this hassle!
The first thing you should do is evaluate your need for these groups. Are they really necessary? If not, then why have them?
You may be able to organize one-on-one conversations or conferences between two people instead. This could be done via phone call, through video chat, or both. These conversations are usually more efficient than face-to-face ones because you don’t have as much noise (noise being distractions like music or other sounds in the background).
A good way to test this out is to see how well each person does individually outside of the group setting. You might find that someone who seemed less social before now has several friends due to their success in teamwork. Or perhaps there is no longer a need for the team since nothing major happened.
The second most common type of meetings are recurring ones that happen at a specific time every few weeks or months. These types of meetings can feel very drag-and-drop as you know what to do ahead of time, but they may still feel like they go too quickly because there is not enough time to really talk about anything.
Meetings with this type of schedule usually start with an informal chat where people get to know each other, discuss things, and work towards setting up the main topic of the meeting.
This way, when the actual meeting comes around, everyone has already spent some time getting to know one another and talking about things.
In fact, one of the biggest reasons why people get stuck in recurring meetings is because they don’t know where the next meeting will take place. This can be tricky if you’re busy or have other commitments that may change.
If your job requires you to travel for business, it can be difficult to coordinate all of these things when most of the meetings happen online.
It’s important to be clear about what time the meeting starts and ends as well as how long it will last. This way you won’t need to worry too much about leaving home early just so you’ll make it in time!
Another option is to find out whether there are any facilities at the meeting venue you could use for work. This might be possible free of cost or through membership schemes – check out if anything fits here.
Whatever you do, don’t assume everyone else knows this information already! Check first before attending the next meeting.
As mentioned earlier, meeting organizers can set up recurring meetings by adding individuals or groups to the “Meeting organizer” list. They then use that person as an attendee for the next meeting!
This is very helpful if you are no longer in the employee organization but still want to keep connected with your old team. Or if someone new needs time to gel into the organizational structure, they can join you for some paid meet-and-greets until they are fully integrated.
It also makes sense if there are not enough people in the initial meeting to have another one right away. This way, anyone who wants a repeat meeting has access to it without having to ask permission first!
Remember to update your software to show the meeting as recurring so everyone knows how to connect.
