When was the last time you held a staff meeting? Do you do them regularly or once at the beginning of the season and never again? For a myriad of reasons, many store managers don’t hold regular staff meetings. And they do they may not be getting the most they could from them. Good staff meetings can focus a team, energize employees and engage them in ways ad-hoc interactions don’t.
So how do you turn a halted or ho-hum approach to staff meetings into a high-functioning management tool? Here are six ways to supercharge your staff meetings and ultimately your staff.
1. Connect daily work with your organization’s purpose. In addition to distributing information, staff meetings present an opportunity to connect your team’s daily work to your organization’s purpose. No matter what they do, employees usually enjoy their jobs more when their organization’s leaders talk about the importance of their work.
2. Highlight relevant metrics. Connecting work to purpose usually works best when a team focuses on both anecdotal and analytical information. If you don’t currently track statistics such as average sales per customer or busiest times of day, start. With regular attention placed on the right metrics, the team is more likely to make good choices as to where it should focus its efforts.
3. Follow a formula and rotate responsibilities. Successful staff meetings usually follow an agenda that includes looking at weekly metrics, sharing information from the top, highlighting success and a team-building activity. By sticking with a formula, managers help their employees know what to expect. Managers can then rotate the responsibility of the meeting to different people so employees can develop their skills.
4. Celebrate successes. In many organizations, there is a huge appreciation shortage. Staff meetings provide managers and employees with regular intervals to practice gratitude. Well-delivered praise ties the action to the outcome. A praise segment in your staff meetings ensures that you will routinely take the time to recognize efforts.
5. Focus on continuous improvement and lessons learned. Staff meetings that include an opportunity to share lessons learned help drive continuous improvement. Try modeling the process. Here is an example you can adapt: “I had an interaction with a customer that could have gone better. I’m going to tell you what happened, and then we will discuss some ideas about how we should should handle something similar in the future.”
6. Develop a schedule and stick with it. Almost anyone can follow the first five steps some of the time, but those who get the most out of staff meetings hold them consistently. Good staff meetings aren’t perfunctory activities that add little value. On the contrary, when used to their full capacity, they are a dynamic management tool. ■
