Team meetings are an essential part of daily working life. Projects have to be coordinated, texts approved and decisions made. Without regular communication, nothing progresses. This is why meetings are often on employees’ calendars: They spend more than 15 hours a month in meetings of all kinds - but often these are not very productive in terms of results. A lack of efficiency and therefore a waste of valuable working time can be a huge problem for meeting cultures.

Find out in this article how you can organize effective team meetings and counteract wasted capacity.

Meetings are important to ensure balanced communication and a steady project flow that leads to successful results. Regular coordination within the team is therefore essential for smooth workflows and collaboration. But why exactly are meetings often so unproductive?

There are several reasons why team meetings are inefficient - apart from small talk and coffee chats. Here are the top 6 on our shit list:

  1. Nobody knows what it’s actually about.
  2. No one was prepared.
  3. Some participants have forgotten the meeting or arrive late.
  4. Topics are discussed that have no place in the meeting.
  5. There is one person who talks too much and gives monologues.
  6. No to-dos are set in the meeting and no decisions are made.

You have probably already experienced one of the points mentioned here yourself. Points 4 to 6 are things that you can regulate through moderation. For this, one person must take the lead and intervene as soon as the conversation no longer revolves around the essentials.

However, points 1 to 3 are of an organizational nature, so you can prevent them perfectly in advance. To ensure that everyone is clear about what will be discussed at a meeting, you should have already defined the objectives and agenda of the team meeting when you invite them to the meeting.

Only with an agenda can participants prepare effectively for the team meeting or perhaps realize early on that they have nothing to contribute to the topic at hand. This way you avoid wasting time on all sides! In addition, the objectives and agenda help you not to stray too far from the topic and lose the infamous red thread.

With SeaTable you have the possibility to avoid this problem: Our software is so flexible that you can use it to plan, conduct and document meetings in a structured way. All appointments, topics and participants can be called up transparently and in a structured way in one place. This makes your meetings efficient and fruitful.

Our software solution starts with the agenda and enables comprehensive and structured management of appointments and data. It is also used for the documentation and follow-up of meetings. Below we explain exactly how to use our self-created template and what features await you.

Click here to go directly to the template for team meetings

At meetings, it is important to plan the content to be discussed well in advance. Without preparing content, the meeting is haphazard, chaotic and also pointless, because the aim of meetings is not only to reach mutual agreement, but also to make progress in projects. Decisions should be made that achieve results. If this does not happen, then the meeting has completely missed its purpose.

With SeaTable you have a central place where all planning steps can be completed. Here you date the team meetings, invite participants to them and create an agenda and topic boards in advance. Afterwards, the meeting minutes and other important documents are stored directly in the table so that colleagues who are unable to attend can find out about the results of the meeting. The storage of minutes also serves to document work steps, ideas and agreements - so nothing gets lost and you have everything in black and white.

But now from the beginning: We start in the table overview of the template, where the meetings are listed. Some important information is already entered here. Enter the name of the meeting in the first column so that everyone knows exactly what it is about. If you are particularly precise here, many questions will be clarified in advance.

We have designed our template in a simple and straightforward way. You will find all the important parameters for planning and conducting meetings in a table. In the first step, you define a concise and meaningful title for the meeting, such as “Brainstorming for the 2022 Christmas campaign”. This way, every invited participant already knows what the meeting is about.

With the date column you can define in the next step on which day and time the meeting should start and when it should end. The subsequent formula column automatically calculates the duration of the meeting, so that everyone knows at a glance how much time they need to schedule. In the “Employees” column, you specify all employees who should attend the meeting. All employees will then receive an automatic notification, which we will explain in more detail below.

Manage team meetings with SeaTable

The next step is to define the room where the meeting will take place. The rooms are clearly separated by color so that it is easy to see where you are meeting. The next column shows a particularly important part of the preparation and follow-up: The agenda. Since SeaTable is also a database, all topics, files and minutes can be stored directly on the spot and edited synchronously. Every user who is authorized can work in Base with other users at the same time and, for example, enter important topics.

In the agenda column, all users can enter their topics in advance and thus name important points to be discussed in the meeting. At the same time, the agenda also functions as a protocol aid or even as a protocol altogether: Because all changes in it are immediately displayed to the other participants on their laptops when they have opened Base. Working collaboratively without causing a tangled mess of file versions is an enormous relief in everyday work and simplifies complexity, especially in coordination processes.

The agenda also helps to prepare for the meeting accordingly. A quick glance at it is enough to find out about the topics and perhaps look for information or files that will be needed later. It also helps with the follow-up and the creation of minutes that can be uploaded later in the file column. This is helpful for all those who were not able to attend the meeting or who want to read something again.

The chat function makes e-mails superfluous

The chat function in each row, i.e. in each individual team meeting, enables uncomplicated and streamlined communication that makes any e-mails superfluous. When you open row (click on the small blue arrows on the left in row), an overall view of the meeting opens. On the right is the chat, where you can easily add employees and write important messages, such as that employee Müller should please upload the interim presentation with the annual review.

The tagged staff member receives an automatic notification by email about the chat message and can then simply reply to it in the chat itself. In this way, questions can be clarified in advance, materials collected or other important information exchanged. Everything is collected transparently and comprehensibly so that everyone is on board and responsibilities are clearly delineated.

With SeaTable, you can map your entire team meetings in one central location.

Creating different views is one of the practical advantages of SeaTable over other spreadsheets.

Own views enable more order

Create as many views as you like and design them exactly as you need the data at the moment. The settings in the original view do not change. One data set, but hundreds of display options: That’s possible with SeaTable.

In our example, we have created a separate view for each employee and defined with the filter rule that only those appointments are displayed in which, for example, Mr. Müller also appears. This way he knows which meetings are coming up soon and how he has to prepare for them. He can design, filter, group and sort the view himself in the way that is most convenient for him.

The views are still important for the calendar plug-in and are needed immediately. If you create a view for each room, for example

SeaTable is also equipped with a calendar plug-in. Here, appointments of any kind can be integrated to keep a good overview. For the general meeting view, you can simply select this view in the calendar plugin and set all parameters to suit your needs.

In the calendar you can see all meetings

We have therefore categorized the rooms in single-select columns, as we can set different colors per room here. In the calendar plugin, this has the advantage that the different team meetings can be displayed in color exactly according to the room color scheme. For example, if you want to create another meeting at the same time on 10/20, you will see directly that it may not take place in the blue meeting room.

Calendar views

The views created are now used in the plug-in. To do this, simply select the view of the staff member or the room that is to be displayed in the calendar. In this way, each staff member also gets their own calendar view in which all their meetings are entered. The same applies to the room overview: With a filter, the room view EG R002 only shows those meetings that take place in this room. To find a free room when planning a meeting, an appointment can be created and booked directly via the view.

This means that there are no more duplicate appointments and everyone has a visual point of contact for the appointments.

As mentioned above, SeaTable’s notification rules are an ideal solution for simplifying communication and reducing the number of emails sent. This saves time and protects the already well-filled email inbox. We have created two notification rules: The first informs all invited members that they have been added to a team meeting. With one click, they can then go directly to Base and find out about the meeting.

The second rule is a reminder notification set with a deadline. One day before the start of the team meeting (selectable with the “Start” column) a notification is sent to all invited members so that they do not forget about the meeting. A single notification is sent, but you can also set hourly notifications, for example. This way everyone will be reminded of the upcoming meeting and can prepare for all topics in time.

As you can see: With SeaTable, organising and conducting meetings is no magic trick. Optimal preparation is achieved through notification rules, custom views, chat function and the agenda, while the agenda invites collaborative work during the execution. For follow-up, all important details are listed and saved in Base, so that everything can be tracked and read at any time. You’ll never miss a meeting again!

Test our template today and register completely free of charge.

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