Do you have some colleagues that you see every day and others whom you talk to once or twice a year? Do you struggle to find time to connect with everyone on your team? If that’s the case, you may benefit from a more structured meeting schedule.
Establishing recurring meetings can be a great way to standardize the frequency of your meetings and take the hassle out of planning them. Instead of attending meetings on an irregular basis — or having too many of them — you can set time aside to check in with your supervisors, teammates, and other colleagues on a regular schedule.
Here are the pros and cons of scheduling meetings that repeat on a regular basis, and how to choose the optimal recurrence pattern for each type of meeting.
What Is a Recurring Meeting?
A recurring meeting is one that repeats on a regular schedule, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. For example, a recurring team meeting takes place on a regular basis and allows team members to check in on project progress.
Other types of recurring meetings include:
- One-on-one meetings: These include performance review meetings and other meetings set aside to discuss performance expectations or career goals.
- Daily scrum meetings: Daily scrum meetings, also called stand-up meetings, are brief meetings that happen every day to share status updates.
- Skip-level meetings: A skip-level meeting is a type of check-in in which you meet with your boss’s boss or your supervisor’s supervisor.
- All-hands meetings: An all-hands meeting, also called a town hall meeting, is a company-wide meeting intended to build cohesion and deliver updates.
Other types of meetings, such as board meetings and post-mortem meetings, are less likely to be recurring, because they happen rarely or on an irregular schedule.
Benefits of Recurring Meetings
A recurring meeting schedule offers several advantages over a schedule that does not repeat, including consistency and accountability. Here’s why that matters:
Consistency
One of the key benefits of having regular meetings is that you don’t have to think about them as often. Once you’ve set a date and time for your first meeting, you can stick with the same schedule for subsequent meetings, sparing you from additional Doodle polls and email threads for each new meeting.
Accountability
With regularly scheduled meetings, team members know when they’ll be expected to share a status update or complete an action item. By having frequent check-ins, you can improve team accountability and provide more opportunities for collaboration.
Predictability
With recurring meetings, there are no surprises. Participants can save the event to their calendars well in advance, ensuring they don’t have any scheduling conflicts. Attendees won’t be caught off guard by last-minute meetings or unexpected agenda items.
Challenges of Recurring Meetings
Recurring meetings have their benefits, but they aren’t right for every type of meeting, and in some cases, they can even be a hindrance. Here are some drawbacks to look out for when scheduling recurring meetings:
Meeting overload
Just because a meeting can repeat doesn’t mean it should. You can easily end up with meeting overload if you have too many meetings for the same purpose. Ideally, each meeting series will have a start date and end date, rather than go on indefinitely.
Attendance issues
Sure, participants can block out time for a recurring meeting on their calendar, but they may decide to sit it out every once in a while if they know they can attend the next one. Plus, if you have a remote or hybrid work policy, the perfect day of the week for your in-person team to meet might be a struggle for someone in a different time zone.
Lack of focus
Finally, recurring meetings can become just another routine, making it harder for team members to stay focused at work and avoid distractions. Try these fun and engaging team meeting ideas to improve participation and meeting productivity.
6 Steps to More Productive Recurring Meetings
Before scheduling a recurring meeting, take some time to think about what you want to get out of it. Follow these six steps to get started:
1. Choose an appropriate meeting schedule
First, consider your meeting options and choose the right recurrence pattern for each type of meeting. For example, your project team might have a daily standup meeting, but skip-level meetings only need to happen on a quarterly or annual basis.
2. Send out meeting invites in advance
Send out calendar invites so it’s easy for participants to add the event to their calendar. Some video conferencing platforms, like Zoom, let you schedule recurring meetings with the same meeting ID, so you don’t have to create new meeting details each time. You can also schedule recurring events on Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.
Make sure to include the meeting start time and end time so it shows up accurately in Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar.
3. Create a meeting agenda
Agendas are important for recurring meetings because they help you differentiate one meeting from the next. You can use the same meeting agenda template for each repeat meeting, but make sure you update it with new discussion topics and action items.
If you don’t have time to do it yourself, you can use Anchor AI to create an agenda for you based on the notes from your previous meeting.
4. Rotate roles and responsibilities
On some teams, the roles are defined, and you’ll always have the same note-taker or meeting facilitator. But if you can, vary it up to keep team members engaged. Having rotating roles and responsibilities can inspire creativity and prevent boredom.
5. Use an automated note-taking tool
Having someone on your team take meeting notes isn’t your only option. Using an AI note-taking tool can help you get more out of meetings by freeing up all of your team members to participate and ensure you have an accurate record of what went on.
Anchor AI can help you take meeting notes or minutes, generate a full transcript, and even identify action items and add them to your action item tracker. Anchor AI works well with remote collaboration tools like video conferencing platforms, so it’s easy to save a record of your meeting in audio, video, or written form.
6. Follow-up and ask for feedback
Send out a follow-up email after every meeting and don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Did the meeting time and structure work for everyone, or could you have done things differently? Take steps to optimize your recurring meeting schedule over time.
Make the Most of Recurring Meetings with Anchor AI
Recurring meetings are those that happen on a regular basis, such as a daily scrum meeting, a weekly team meeting, or a quarterly performance review. A regular meeting schedule can take the hassle out of planning meetings, but it can also introduce some challenges, such as meeting overload and a lack of focus.
Make the most of recurring meetings with Anchor AI. Anchor AI can take notes for you, identify action items, send out follow-up emails, and more. All you have to do is invite Anchor AI to your virtual meeting or upload a recording of an in-person meeting.
Max, your AI project manager, can even give you feedback on how your meeting went and create an organized meeting agenda for your next meeting.
Get started today and get more out of your regularly scheduled meetings!