Meeting Meetings
Since launching our new Meetings functionality within TidyHQ we have seen excellent uptake from around the world. Running an effective meeting is critical for organisations of all sizes — this is part of the reason we are so passionate about making this the easiest and enjoyable experience for all parties concerned.
It’s only been a few months since we released this big update, but in that time we have seen over 1,400 meetings run with us with some interesting insights which we would love to share.
Numbers
The average meeting invitation is sent to 8.3 people with only ~50% responding with an Attending, Not Attending or Maybe. The other 50% don’t bother responding at all!
Sundays is the preferred day for spending time on meetings, the average time spent is 79 minutes on Sundays. Fridays are the least favoured for spending time thinking about Meetings, which is probably fair enough 😇
What we have learnt in the first three months
1. You can never please everyone.
While we did a large amount of research before starting our build, talking with existing customers, liaising with groups such as the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Governance Institute, Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators along with our own experience with running and being a part of a large number of committee and board meetings.
Even after all of this research, we learnt that the range of organisations that we cover, everyone from the Army, to Schools, Boards, football clubs along with everyone else means that we would never be able to have the ‘perfect’ meetings tool and that’s ok.
What we have done is provided a tool that seems to make a meeting experience a delightful one for the majority of our organisations, which was our goal and something we’re very happy with.
2. The new way is not always the easy way.
By creating a new way to record meetings and ensuring that governance and great record keeping is something that organisations have out of the box is a game changer. Well, we thought so — unfortunately, some of these organisations have been around for hundreds of years and the way of running a meeting and the methods used to record it haven’t changed either. Adjusting the meeting minutes practice to bring it into 2017 has been met with different feedback, some trying to drop in traditional ways, which we totally understand but haven’t allowed for. The silver lining is that many of those organisations have come around after only a few months because they can see this is actually an easier way for everyone.
3. Meetings don’t have to be hard.
We are seeing that through using the tool the people administrating meetings are having an easier time with the majority telling us they find it easier and are happier to stay in that administration role as a result — which is a huge plus for the organisation. Attracting and retaining volunteers and administrators is what we see time and time again with our platform — proving that if you can work smarter rather than harder life can be more enjoyable!
What’s next
We have had a range of feedback. Integrations with other third party tools such as video conferencing makes senses as does syncing calendar feeds or Tasks. We also understand that the 50% non-response rate for email invitations is also as a result of having email burnout — allowing an organisation to send Meeting Invitations via SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram or another Instant Messenger service will likely result in a better return rate for organisations as well.
We hope you’re enjoying the Meetings functionality and the TidyHQ platform.
