How to organize effective meetings and get results from meetings

Poor preparation, confused allocation of tasks and responsibilities, lack of punctuality ... are your meetings time consuming, demoralizing and a money pit?

You can turn your meetings into productive discussions and outcomes with the help of these tips:

1- Set specific goals

Set Meeting Goals

The success of a meeting held in preparation. To be effective, you must do it only when you know what it will be used. Define the objectives of this meeting allows to decline the agenda. Establish it in a clear and concise manner, detailing the themes. This will determine the time required for the meeting and perhaps eliminate some points. We must be reasonable: a usual two-hour meeting work is usually sufficient.







2- Choose the right participants

Meeting Participants

Make sure that all present employees have a real interest in taking part in the meeting. A good remedy against boredom and possible yawning ... The facilitator may also provide for the presence of certain people for part of the meeting, according to the points raised. Participants often arrive with a blank notepad and pen, then it would come with a folder containing the history of meetings and a presentation of their intervention.

To hunt the spirit of improvisation and inefficiency that follows, tell your employees in advance of the holding of the meeting, the agenda and schedule of its amplitude. Ask them clearly to prepare for a built debate by saying for example on every invitation you would expect from so and so to intervene on a particular issue. They prepare all the more they will know how much time will be given to each point. To optimize the dynamics of trade, do not exceed eight or ten people per meeting.


3- Pay attention to the environment

A Meeting Room

The place where the meeting will take place is important. To make the presence of the boss less burdensome, avoid his desk. The choice of a meeting room is therefore more appropriate. Avoid the blind rooms - participants get tired more quickly if they are not illuminated by the light of day - and the concrete walls that reflect sound, and prefer light walls. To the facilitator at the center of the group, the ideal is a table "U". In exceptional meetings and long lasting, a break is needed at least every two hours. If possible, avoid the niche 14 hours- 16 hours, time of day when the brain is less alert due to digestion.

4- Follow a schedule

Setting Fixed Meeting Agenda

Warn the participants that the meeting will start on time. This is the best way for it to finish on time, simple rule of respect for the organization of work of each. If someone arrives late, the presenter can pause the course of the meeting to get noticed. We bet that the latecomer will pay more attention to his watch at next appointment.
Also make sure to respect the agenda and the time allocated in advance for each issue. If two thirds of invited participants do not have the time to address them, they may prove frustrated to have worked for nothing and to be disappointed by the meeting. The facilitator should therefore not hesitate to call to order the "windbags".




5- Animate listening
The choice of the supervisor as meeting facilitator is often not the best: the function needs not to be done by one of the most involved participants. Guarantor of the rhythm of the meeting, the facilitator speaks little and shows able to speak other to achieve the objectives. It regulates the time. When a new problem threatens to monopolize the discussion, he treats it as a separate item on the agenda and postpones.
Also be aware that conflicts often emerge during meetings. "If an important point involves two interlocutors, we must not let them monopolize the floor, but getting them to meet to discuss it outside, and communicate the results to the next meeting for example.

6- Establish clear rules
A meeting always starts with the clear wording of the topics to the agenda and the expected timing for each item. Indeed, the participants do not necessarily have all noted. The facilitator must pass a kind of contract with the group to fit the spirit of the meeting. In early meeting, it establishes the principle that those who want to make a critique against-offer, then to discuss all the proposals. "With a positive review, the debate will be constructive. If certain points are not addressed, they will be deferred to the next meeting. This presentation early in the session should not last more than two minutes.

7- Synthesize results
At the end of meeting, the facilitator summarizes, orally, arrested decisions, missions of each by the next meeting and the points still under discussion, to be included on a future agenda.

With these points, you can get productive meetings and outcomes.

Do you have other pointers that we can add to this list? Let us know, we will be glad to include them here.

Employee Separation

All things must end, and employment is no different. Whether the separation is initiated by the employee or by the employer, HR representatives need to know how to handle the situation, and what laws may apply. Regardless of why employees leave, companies may have regulatory responsibilities, such as providing COBRA coverage and unemployment compensation.
Terminations

Employees whose work is not satisfactory should be notified of that fact as early as possible, both to allow for improvement and to prevent any later termination from being a total shock

Preparation

When planning an employee termination it's important to be prepared. HR must make a case for the termination. The detail needed may vary depending on the culture, employment relationship (i.e. contract versus employment-at-will), collective bargaining agreements, etc. The following list shows the factors that are likely to be considered if a termination is challenged.

1. The employee was made aware of your expectations.
2. The employee was warned of the possible consequences of his or her conduct (or failure to meet expectations).
3. The expectation or rule at issue is reasonably related to efficient and safe operation.
4. The employer investigated the matter fairly and objectively before administering discipline or termination.
5. The employee was given a chance to tell his or her side of the story.
6. The employer offered substantial evidence to support its decision.
7. The employer applied its rules even-handedly and without discrimination or retaliation.
8. The degree of discipline (or termination) is reasonably related to the seriousness of the issue, taking into consideration the employee's work record and length of service.
9. To put all this together, if an older employee is released for attendance problems, and a younger employee is hired as a replacement, the terminated employee might attempt to make a claim of age discrimination.

Gather the Facts
Collect the facts from all parties involved before determining if an employee should be discharged. Conduct the investigation as soon as possible. An employee's recollections of events can fade, and information shared between employees can taint the truth.

Check the Employee's File
Maintain a general file for every employee. (Remember, when the employee is eligible for health benefits, establish a separate file for protected health information.) Make a note in the file whenever the employee receives a verbal warning. A written record of verbal warnings serves as a reminder of actions taken, and is especially useful if an employee transfers to a position under another supervisor, or if the supervisor leaves and a new person is hired. If a termination is necessary, the employee file should already include documentation on the reason and justification. You should not need to "build" a file to justify termination.

Review the Facts
Before making a final decision on termination, review and analyze the findings to verify that they are accurate.

Consult with Supervisors
Supervisors should talk to HR about a potential termination. The supervisor should also follow company policy on who has the final decision to terminate, as well as how and where the termination should take place. Neither a supervisor nor HR personnel should perform the termination on his or her own.

Termination Procedure
Companies should have a detailed procedure for employee termination, and that procedure should be followed to avoid a possible wrongful termination suit.

Job Satisfaction

An example from the retail sector is one that many people can probably recognize from their own empirical evidence of shop assistants who are happy in their roles and in the company of like-minded colleagues, but who perhaps are not always alert to the possibility of delighting the store’s customers. Moving on from those situations in which the intrinsic job-interest to an employee may cut across notions of service that are deemed acceptable to customers, an all-too-frequent cause of difficulties is an ill thought through system for targeting and possibly rewarding employees. A classic example of this is drawn from call centres, where the agents are paid according to the number of calls fielded. The superficial business logic is easily understood: that is, it is driven by a desire to eliminate waiting times on the telephone for customers. However the law of unintended consequences takes over, as can happen, and the agents make sure that they keep the length of the calls to a minimum so they can move on to the next one. Unfortunately, for many customers this means there is not enough time for their problems to be addressed, let alone solved, and it will probably result in them having to make further calls until they achieve a resolution.

There are many examples available that seek to demonstrate this ‘happy’ combination and IT is a fertile area. Where employees understand what matters to customers and use this intelligence to identify the problem, they can fix it and take the necessary action to prevent it from recurring. This significantly reduces the impact of IT failure on their clients’ businesses.

In ‘Managing and measuring for value: the case of call centre performance’, the Cranfield School of Management highlighted some notable examples of organizations adopting an approach that sought to capitalize on such intelligence. First, the European airline bmi took this approach, and reduced queues at ticket offices, check-ins and boarding gates. The airline’s IT director Richard Dawson is quoted as saying: ‘Over the last two years calls have been reduced by 40 per cent and time to fix by 70 per cent.’

Another instance comes from Fujitsu, the IT solutions provider, which had a self-imposed time limit on calls. When it got rid of this time limit staff were in effect given permission to fully resolve customer queries. This had the effect of reducing the number of unnecessary calls by as much as 60 per cent, and increasing customer satisfaction. Moreover, staff turnover fell sharply, from 42 per cent to 8 per cent, as staff gained more job satisfaction, while operating costs were reduced by 20 per cent.

Continuing with this theme, Joy LePree reported a case involving the Naval Air Depot at Cherry Point, North Carolina. The depot struggled to meet deadlines for getting aircraft repaired and back in service. When the situation was analysed it was found that the facility’s overall business philosophy of keeping a lid on costs was at the root of the problem. This was then changed so that the depot’s most important business metric became throughput, or the number of aircraft repaired and returned to service in a given time period. That number doubled in a year, clearly pleasing the depot’s customers. The employees and managers at the depot were also happy as they were able to improve customer service without a significant impact on their budgets. Above all else this is another demonstration of how important and interconnected the business strategy is to the happiness of employees and customers.

Despite the anecdotal evidence, for many it remained unclear whether there was a causal link between employee and customer satisfaction. In 1996 Ryan et al warned that there was ‘insufficient evidence for the popular wisdom that employee attitudes cause customer satisfaction’. They acknowledged the commonsense argument, and that some research testified to employee and customer attitudes influencing each other, but argued that this could be because one was reflective rather than predictive of the other.

Human resource Planning

Human resources planning (HRP) is not having a single definition with which everyone agrees. Many definitions and models of HRP exist. Many HRP practitioners focus on its technical side which is the mathematical and behavioural method of forecasting HR needs and others prefer the managerial side which is the way of decision-makers to tackle human resource issues affecting an organization. Still some distinguish between strategic HRP, undertaken to formulate and/or implement an organization's long-range plans, and operational HRP, undertaken to guide daily HR decisions. Some HR practitioners distinguish between HRP for an organization, which focuses on planning solely to meet organizational demands, and HRP for individuals, which focuses on the implications of such plans for individual career planning.
In spite of these HR practitioners agreed that Human Resources Planning focuses on analyzing an organization's HR needs as the organization's conditions change and then supplying strategies to help respond proactively to those changes over time. HRP helps ensure that the right numbers of the right kinds of people are available at the right times and in the right places to translate organizational plans into reality. This process becomes strategic when some attempt is made to anticipate long-term HR "supplies and demands" relative to changing conditions facing the organization, and then to use HR department programs in an effort to meet these identified HR needs.

The human resources (HR) planning manager is responsible for leading the human resources planning (HRP) department, unit, or function. The nature of this role varies widely, depending on how HRP is handled and where it is placed in the organization. It can also vary by corporate culture and by national culture.

The larger organizations often having specialized units that bear chief responsibility for HRP whether comprehensive or limited. A comprehensive HRP program encompasses all activities a limited program encompasses only some activities. The HR Planning Manager is the supervisor in charge of the HRP unit.
There is a third alternative as the person or position responsible for HRP is also responsible for some other activity, such as training, organization development, or recruitment. In these cases, there is usually less emphasis placed on formal HRP and more emphasis placed on the HR practice area with which it is paired.
Think of the manager as one who:

• Establishes goals and objectives of the HRP department or a specialized unit within the HR department.
• Creates structure for the department.
• Staffs the department.
• Issues orders.
• Resolves destructive conflicts.
• Communicates with those inside and outside the department.
• Plans for needed resources, particularly through budgeting.
• Deals with power and political issues.

The HRP manager interacts with those outside the unit and gears its activities to their needs, the role overlaps with the HR organizational coordinator. To the extent that the manager coordinates activities across HR practice areas and allocates work, the role overlaps with that of the integrator. Finally, the integrator, manager, and evaluator share interest in controlling and monitoring results against pre-established objectives and criteria.

The manager mobilizes departmental and unit resources and those of the organization in order to help implement HR Grand Strategy. To succeed in this process, he or she needs general management ability, technical knowledge of HRP, and expertise and must be future agile be able to react quickly when the need arises
Establishing HRP Department Goals and Objectives:

A major responsibility of the HRP manager is to establish department goals and objectives based on departmental purpose and HR Grand Strategy. Management by objectives (MBO) is at once a way of planning for implementation, evaluating employee performance and controlling operations. Our focus at present is on MBO in planning and, more particularly in managing.

MBO for a department involves eight steps:

• The top executive meets in a group setting with supervisors in charge of each HR practice area. The meeting focuses on two questions: What is the present status of the department? What should be the status of the department in the future?
• The top HR executive meets with each supervisor, one-on-one, to negotiate individual objectives. This process helps integrate such practice areas as career planning and management, training, recruitment, organization development (OD), job redesign, employee assistance, labor relations, and compensation/benefits.
• Each supervisor prepares goals to maintain the unit or practice area, deal with special problems, and improve operations of the unit.
• Supervisors in each unit meet with their subordinates to continue the process.
• The results of the meetings are formalized in writing and are expressed in measurable terms.
• Periodically, the top executive meets with each subordinate to review results and discuss problems encountered in trying to achieve objectives and take advantage of new opportunities.
• The process continues down the chain of command, with each supervisor meeting with each of the subordinates to review results and discuss problems/opportunities.

The results are evaluated at least once a year and then used as the basis for pay raises, bonuses, and determinations about individual promo ability. The original process is then repeated in order to establish new objectives for the next year.