The Pros and Cons to Holding Your Meeting During the Morning or Evening
by Fintech News Singapore January 1, 2017Meetings are the bane of many an employee’s life, but having to facilitate them can be a nightmare of its very own.
Depending on when you schedule them, they can go from bad to unbearable in a relatively short amount of time. Not sure when you should schedule your next important video conference? In this article, we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of holding that conversation at three different times of the day: first thing in the morning, right after everybody’s had their lunch, and late in the work day.
Holding a Discussion First Thing in the Morning
via pixababy
Starting the discussion in the morning can give everybody a great head start, since they haven’t exhausted their energy on tons of executive tasks yet. Unfortunately, most of the people involved may still be too sleepy to contribute any constructive thoughts on whatever matter is being discussed.
It’s even worse if you try to schedule your meeting on a Monday morning, since most people still wish they were back at home in their beds. (Yes, this holds true even if you’re holding a virtual meeting.
They’d rather be in bed than in front of a video camera!) If you do want to get the meeting out of the way as soon as possible, though, then this is the best time to gather everybody together into a virtual conference room. This is because the people involved have had time to settle into their schedule, and don’t have to deal with a pile of tasks just yet.
Holding Your Meeting After Lunch
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According to a study cited in Wonder HowTo, you make better choices after you’ve had your meals because you’ve already been reenergized. However, for some people, trying to work after they’ve just eaten a big meal could make them feel even sleepier than when they started out. Thus, the best thing to do in this scenario is figure out the types of people you’re going to deal with during the conference.
Although you can’t exactly tell everybody to attend the meeting at lunchtime (you’d be the most unpopular person in the office!), you have another option to consider. You can, instead, invite your participants to come into the meeting and have their meals while the discussion is going on, as long as they put their mics on mute while they’re munching on their food.
Sure, it might look a little distracting, but at least they won’t be too hungry or too full to pay attention to you. And in case anybody does miss an important tidbit, it’s easy to refer to video recordings if you’re using a BlueJeans enterprise video conferencing solution. That way, they won’t have to panic in case they think they forgot to note down an important detail.
Holding a Conference in the Late Afternoon
This may be one of the most controversial times to hold a meeting, but it’s one that may make you reconsider your initial first reactions to the idea. According to an article by Quartz, the best time and day to hold a business meeting is on Tuesday afternoons. This is because, based on data cited, most employees seem to be free or more likely to accept an invite if the conference is to be held at around 2:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays.
On the other hand, Monday mornings, as we’ve previously discussed, are the worst time of day to discuss any important matters. However, you’ll have to take into consideration just how important the topic of your meeting is. If it’s something that’s crucial to the future of the company, you may want to discuss it in the morning instead.
But if it’s an agenda full of relatively simple action steps, you may be able to breeze through them in the afternoon. That’s because most people have already finished up the more important work they needed to do and can thus devote more time to the loose ends that need to be addressed. Afternoons are also great in case your business covers several branches all over the world, and thus covers more than one time zone.
Pick the Schedule That’s Best for Everybody
No matter which time of the day you decide to schedule your conference, one thing is clear: you’ll need to master the art of engaging your participants so that they don’t end up sleeping throughout the entire thing.
Otherwise, you’re just going to struggle to get people to pitch in their two cents each and every time you gather them together for some important agenda you’ve got to tackle. Nevertheless, we think that considering the information above may help you nudge your meeting participants in the right direction. Do your best and get that meeting done in less than an hour, at most!
Featured image via pixabay
