6 Types of Meetings Your Business Needs to Succeed

Meetings are a great way to get everyone together to share ideas, goals, and outcomes. They can also be an unproductive waste of time if you could have done the same thing without gathering everyone together in the same room. 

In fact, more and more companies are moving away from mandatory in-person meetings and looking at tools that allow sharing and collaboration throughout projects. Before you decide to forego all business meetings, however, you should understand which ones are critical for the success of any business. 

Onboarding Meetings

When you take the time to properly bring new employees and team members up to date on policies, procedures, and expectations, you also help each new hire reach their full potential within the company. Onboarding meetings are designed to facilitate this process. Depending on the structure and size of your business, these can take on several forms. 

One one one meetings with an HR manager can cover policies, procedures, expectations, and reporting for each position. Training requirements and job duties may be covered here. New employees can learn about benefits and how to apply for or enroll in each type. 

In team-based work environments, you may want to schedule an onboarding session to welcome new hires and introduce them to each member of their new team. An icebreaker activity and introduction can help them get a feel for group dynamics. If kept informal, it can be a great way for new staff to ask questions and get advice so they don't feel overwhelmed. 

Brainstorming Sessions

Instead of creating information overload, brainstorming sessions can lead to your company's next big idea. Remember, effective brainstorming is all about the number of new ideas, not necessarily their merit. Encourage everyone to share as much as they can to generate new ideas for products, services, marketing strategies, maybe even vending machine options. 

Sales Meetings

Any business that directly sells something, whether that is a product, service, or information, should consider including sales meetings in their schedule. This gives everyone a chance to review goals and objectives related to specific programs. Make sure your sales meeting agenda addresses tracking and reporting procedures so everyone has clear information on their individual responsibilities. 

Budget and Financial Planning Meetings

Chances are you want your business to make money. And, the surest way to do that is to plan for financial success. Involve everyone with budget responsibilities in the financial planning meetings.

For individual departments, you may want to hold these as smaller, one-on-one sessions. This way everyone has a chance to discuss the concerns and needs of their department without making everyone else listen to what is irrelevant information for them. If you do choose that method, it is still a good idea to get everyone together to go over final budget numbers and business priorities. 

Annual Meetings 

As the name implies, you should be holding an annual meeting each year to review the previous year and go over big picture objectives for the next one. Who is involved in an annual meeting will depend on how your business is structured and operated, but they can include top management, department heads, and shareholders.

Campaign Specific Planning or Recap Sessions

When you have multiple projects going, holding kickoff and recap meetings can help give each one a definitive start and finish. This helps clarify goals, objectives, and strategies that are specific to that campaign so everyone is working from the same page. 

Recap sessions allow team members to share successes and look at turn other, less than successful attempts into learning experiences for the next project. Just because a strategy didn't work one time does not mean it won't be great if applied in another area. 

There are a variety of tools to help you hold effective meetings. New technology enables groups to collaborate and share without having to interrupt their normal activities. But, there are still times when you want to pull everyone together for a productive meeting and work session. Encourage participation when you do host meetings to maximize their impact throughout your company.