The Blog on Meeting Room Management

Workers worldwide report that they spend more time preparing for meeting than they do attending them. So when you walk into that meeting room, you had better be ready.

Meetings: the necessary evil of every business. We need them, they’re not going anywhere, yet office employees site them as the number one waste of time throughout their week and biggest hindrance to productivity. Eliminating the many tedious tasks associated with every meeting—such as finding and booking rooms, reserving technology, ordering catering, and dealing with guests—is a first and tremendously important step in saving time, boosting productivity, and improving employee morale when it comes to meetings.

Investing in new software is risky. Technology advances and changes at such a breathtaking pace these days it’s hard to keep up. Whether it be consumer electronics or enterprise software solutions, what is groundbreaking one moment seems woefully inadequate the next when a new version, product, or way of thinking emerges. Many companies invest years of time and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars into finding and implementing the perfect technological solution, only to find a different solution that better fits their needs is now available. 

That’s why shopping for enterprise software can be such an overwhelming process. We’ve covered this topic here on the AskCody blog before because it’s an important one. We regularly hear from evaluators that knowing where to start is often the hardest part. That’s why it’s critical to arm yourself with the knowledge you need to confidently make decisions about the future of your business needs and the capabilities of the tools at your disposal. 

The meeting challenge: We say it so often it, it should be one of our taglines: without a meeting management solution, a one-hour meeting is never just a one-hour meeting. Meetings are a constant source of wasted resources and frustrated office workers. In fact, according to recent research, meetings are considered the No. 1 time-waster at the office. 

Planning the perfect meeting is so much more than putting together a compelling PowerPoint presentation. Much of a meeting’s success has to do with not only the flow of the presentation itself, but also the care you put into creating a welcoming environment conducive to productivity for all of those involved. A professional mentor once told me that he never schedules meetings that would last longer than it takes a butt to fall asleep in a seat. I love that philosophy, but in today’s meeting-filled business world, it can often be unrealistic.  

The best way, then, to keep the room’s attention high is to provide ample comfort options, besides the comfort level of the chairs themselves, of course. When it comes to keeping productivity high in lengthy meetings, there are two magic words you need to remember: “food” and “coffee.”  

The Curse of the One-Hour Meeting.

There’s no shortage of jokes about the futility of the average business meeting. Comic strips lament it. Television shows highlight its honor in the hierarchy of company doldrums. It’s possible there is a level of Dante’s Inferno devoted solely to business meetings. 

Almost everyone in today’s business world has experienced the frustration of meetings on scheduling more meetings, the one-hour meeting that stretches well into the afternoon, and most agonizingly, the crush of work that follows the valuable time spent planning for, scheduling, and organizing meetings.