Should I have 2 staff meetings per week in this situation?

Submitted by savethecows0 on Thursday September 26th, 2013 12:23 pm
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I'm a manager in the recreation industry, which means we operate 7 days/week. I have about 12 directs who have different days of the week off. This is a problem for weekly staff meetings because we never have everyone there at once. I've tried two options:

1. Have two weekly staff meetings, one on Monday, one on Friday. My directs who work on both of those days attend both. This allows every direct to attend at least one staff meeting per week.

2. Have one weekly staff meeting with some of my directs and send the meeting notes to all directs. Those who are unable to attend the weekly meeting because of their days off would only get email updates and not attend any staff meetings.

Any advice or suggestions?

Submitted by GlennR on Thursday September 26th, 2013 1:58 pm

One question

Which model do your employees find more effective?

Submitted by lar12 on Friday September 27th, 2013 11:25 am

It's about communication

The goal of the meeting, I presume, is for you to communicate with the team and for the team to communicate with each other. With that in mind, I'd recommend discussing it with the team. ID the problem and provide specific examples. Take their input and try their suggestion(s) and find what works. I once heard the statement, I believe from Horstman, that "they're not as dumb as you think, you're not as smart as you think". It reminds me that I don't have to determine the method nor is my way "right". It's about results, not about me.

Submitted by JMSmithPM on Tuesday October 1st, 2013 10:10 am

We had a similar situation

We had a similar situation at one of my old positions. They only held staff meetings quarterly, but they would have everyone in early on Sunday for an hour (and bring bagels and coffee to soften the blow). I'm not sure how this would scale to weekly meetings.

Submitted by leanne on Sunday October 27th, 2013 12:35 am

I'm a bit late on this, so

I'm a bit late on this, so if you've already decided what you'll do in the future, just ignore me...

I think the 'some people are never there' needs to be managed very carefully, if you go with that option. Some people will feel very left out if they're never at it, and some people couldn't care less. Use DISC to figure out people who would be best able to handle it - if you have a good mix, then always make sure your high Is and Ss are at the meeting if at all possible. Ds and Cs might be more willing to just look at email.

Another possibility you didn't mention is: Have two meeting days, one in each week - that is, one week it's day X, the next week it's day Y, the next week it's X again. This wouldn't really work with a Monday/Friday pattern - you'd end up doing Friday and then Monday meetings, which would be weird. But if you did Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday and Thursday, it might work.