Some may feel like staff meetings are a waste of time, but I don’t. I like to see everyone at least once a week. I like getting input and feedback from the entire staff and I like the 20 minutes or so of camaraderie.
So, on most Monday mornings at 9:30 am, at HJMT COMMUNICATIONS, LLC, we have a staff meeting. Lately, we’ve been bringing in more and more chairs and we don’t all fit around the table but everyone does get an opportunity to speak by bringing up an agenda item.
When we first started having staff meetings nearly 12 years ago, we would go through each and every client strategizing placements or business opportunities for them. But as we’ve been growing, we’ve been having separate department meetings for that. Staff meetings are for general housekeeping/administrative and for brainstorming. That’s it.
For the most part, we have fun during our staff meetings. If someone was walking by our office from the outside, they might think we were having a party because there’s often laughter and people talking over other people and me frantically making the time out symbol with my hands!
When a new person starts, I love to put them on the spot and ask them to say something about themselves to the group. The other day, two new people started. One talked about how he loves to jump out of planes and other daredevil stuff and the other person was a little more sedate talking about how she loves to walk on the beach.
Are staff meetings really necessary? I’m not sure, but I do know that it helps everyone to learn a little more about each other, feel that their role is important and that they are a vital part of the group.
