Using employee feedback to deliver effective meetings

By Ángela Colón |

Ángela Colón outlines the many ways to improve meeting effectiveness and states that employee feedback is perhaps the most valuable and cost-effective to utilize.

Have you ever been in a meeting that takes hours and realized that the topic could have been a 30-minute check-in? Or in a team meeting where only one or two people really participated? Have you led a meeting and left it wondering if your point was clearly made and understood?

These are common scenarios that undermine employees’ productivity and time management, two measures of success in business that are at risk if we don’t know how to deliver effective meetings. Though there are many ways to improve meeting effectiveness, employee feedback is perhaps the most valuable and cost-effective to utilize.

Content marketing expert Paige Magarrey in her article, “Why you should get meeting feedback (every single time!),” highlights the reasons why it is necessary to ask employees for feedback after conducting meetings: employee feedback will help you cut out unnecessary meetings, fix unproductive meetings, eliminate bad habits and check on your team.

When receiving feedback from your team, you can detect how to improve the timing and other aspects of your meetings, such as employee participation and attention. Moreover, asking your colleagues for feedback may reinforce your team’s trust in your organization. You will gain valuable insights and communicate to your teammates that you are interested in their perspectives. This type of feedback is definitely relevant as it allows you to strategize your meetings and make them more effective.

Another aspect you should consider here for delivering effective meetings is that employee feedback not only contributes to review how meetings can improve, but it also helps to comprehend which are the positive factors from previous meetings that can be replicated in upcoming ones. “If you get really good meeting feedback, you can use that intel to fix other meetings that are struggling,” indicates Magarrey in her article. For example, you may receive positive feedback about a methodology used in a meeting that engaged the team; information that can be used in future meetings. Both positive and negative employee feedback will provide you with the information needed to make your meetings more productive and enjoyable for the participants.

Receiving feedback

Now, how do you receive this feedback? Which tools can you use to gather the information of your coworkers? There are a number of ways you can do this:

1. Using the ROTI meeting measurement: According to American writer Chris Higgins in his article, “2 Fast and Easy Ways to Get Meeting Feedback,” this method measures how effective a meeting was in terms of the time invested. The method evaluates effectiveness by qualifying the meeting using a zero-to-four scale. The main variable from this system of measurement is the time. However, you can change the variable to “relevance of the topic discussed” in order to evaluate other aspects of the meeting.

2. Creating a personalized questionnaire in SurveyMonkey: This online platform allows you to collect information using different types of questions (e.g. multiple-choice questions, rating scale, etc.) and compare data after compiling the responses. One positive feature from SurveyMonkey is that it allows you to access different survey templates that match your survey goals. Among these are event planning, market research and customer satisfaction surveys. Any template can be edited to add new questions.

3. Designing an online survey using the platform Zoho: Similar to SurveyMonkey, this tool allows you to create a questionnaire using the questions of your choice. In addition, the surveys you create are mobile-friendly and are easily adaptable to the screen of your device, providing respondents a greater facility to respond to your questions. There is also a free version as well as a pro version that you can check if you want to add more features to your survey.

Overall, it’s highly recommended that you seek employee feedback on your meetings. Our colleagues’ insight will help you determine which aspects of your meetings can be improved and which ones can be replicated in follow-up meetings. In addition, asking for feedback fosters a positive communication environment and shows your team that you’re interested in their opinions.