Taking great meeting minutes is crucial to getting value from your meetings. Minutes provide necessary details, such as who is responsible for each action item, when and how they are to be completed, and more.
Meeting minutes are regarded as written or recorded documents that inform people of what happened during the meeting, what decisions were made and the next steps planned. While some organisations still rely on the conventional, manual process to record meetings, others have shifted to online meeting minutes software to leverage an easy and time-efficient solution for recording minutes. Regardless of the solution, it is important to record effective minutes so you can make the best business decisions.
Effective meeting minutes include:
• The names of all participants and any apologies
• Agenda items
• Actions or tasks
• Decisions made
• Important points
• Future steps
Steps to Keeping Great Meeting Minutes
Step 1: Plan your meeting minutes
An ideal way to record minutes is to plan ahead. Use your meeting agenda – it is an outline of your meeting. Be clear on exactly what you want to achieve during the meeting. For example, your team may make several decisions related to a specific project. You may also devise a strategy to drive your project. The purpose of your meeting may be to test, implement and work on your strategy. Planning your minutes from your agenda will help you focus on the right things during your meeting and record the right things in the minutes. The right online meeting minutes software can help you efficiently record your meeting minutes.
Step 2: Take notes during the meeting
Taking meeting minutes can be challenging. Missing one point can cost you time and money. However, to keep efficient minutes, try to be as brief as possible.
There are a lot of things that are discussed during a meeting, so you need to make sure that you do not miss out on the really important parts. It can be challenging to take a note of everything manually, thus an ideal way of taking minutes is using online meeting minutes software.
But don’t fall into the trap of using a phone to record the meeting and hoping you’ll be able to rely on the audio recording later. While recording meetings can be useful, when you are looking for something specific, it is very difficult to find exactly what was said and by whom. Simple, written minutes are much easier to search!
Step 3: Practice makes perfect – improve your meeting minutes over time
The third step is practice! After a few meetings, you’ll get better at knowing what to actually write in the minutes, that is, the important parts of the conversation, the decisions that have been made and action items.
The following is the essential information that you should include in your minutes:
• What was the purpose of the meeting?
• Where was the meeting held?
• Who were the participants in the meeting?
• What was the goal of the meeting?
• What was discussed and decided during the meeting?
• What actions need to be completed as a result of the meeting?
• When is the next meeting scheduled?
• What will be the agenda for the next meeting?
You can leverage meeting attendance tracking software to manage your meeting’s participants.
meetingTRAC for Efficient Meeting Management
meetingTRAC is smart and easy meeting management software that automates scheduling and agenda templates, allowing minutes and actions to be recorded and distributed electronically in real time.
meetingTRAC lightens the load on businesses, clubs, and community group volunteers by saving time, reducing stress, and empowering clubs and organisations to get on with what really matters. In addition, meetingTRAC helps save money in preparing, running, and reporting on meetings.
meetingTRAC online meeting minutes software is easy to integrate into any organisation, can run on any computer or mobile device, and does not require any software download.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial to explore how meetingTRAC can help you drive efficient meetings.