Running a productive hostel staff meeting

Are your hostel staff meetings boring and unproductive or focused and effective?

Unlike corporate offices where everyone will be at work together from 9:00am-5:00pm, finding a time to gather your team for a hostel staff meeting can be really challenging.  If you want people to stop working or come during their time off, then the meeting has to be worthwhile. No one wants to waste their time just for the sake of having a meeting.  Are your meetings worth coming to?

The articles How to Craft Meetings People Love (Really) and the follow-up article, How to Maximize Meetings, give some suggestions on how to get the most of your team’s time.

Get the basics right:

• Invite the people who need to be there
• Be clear about the purpose, format, necessary decisions to be made, and desired outcome
• Start on time
• Stay on track

Take a systems view:

• You want the information to flow to the right people, whether that’s sending information out to the team or soliciting ideas from them
• Worthwhile meetings need to facilitate that flow of info, minimize filters and speculation, and enhance group cohesion

Make sure a meeting is the best vehicle:

• If everyone needs to get the info at the same time, or if you want a back-and-forth discussion, then a meeting is needed
• If everyone could just as easily absorb the information on their own, then a written summary in an email or log book could suffice

Know the ROI:

• How much salary is paid for that meeting, and what is the return for each participant?
• What is each person contributing to the meeting and receiving in return?
• What is the payback to the organization?
• You can test if your team feels the meeting is worthwhile by making it optional and seeing who shows up

Try the GOTE framework:

• State the Goals for the meeting.
• Note the Obstacles to the goals.
• Articulate the Tactics to be used to overcome the obstacles and/or achieve the goal.
• State the long-term Expectations for the project or relationship to ensure that participants don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

There are three type of meetings described in the article. Perhaps one (or a mix of several) could be useful to your team.

1) The Breakfast Club
Meet for breakfast at an offsite restaurant.  This doesn’t really need to be in the morning, or even at a restaurant. The important thing is to meet on neutral ground to give your team the inside scoop on what’s going on, and let them know you have their backs.

2) The Editorial Scrum
Meet at the beginning of each week so everyone (regardless of position or seniority) can offer suggestions and debate how to approach the situations for the upcoming week.  

3) The Focus Session
A short meeting to discuss the likely events for the day or for the immediate future. (In the case of a hostel this could be a convention, sporting event, concert, festival, large group, big turnover of guests, or simply a particularly high or low occupancy period.)  Each person gives a short, precise report of any information that is relevant to the group.  The meeting lasts exactly as long as it takes to go around the room and pass on the relevant info.  

Some other pointers to consider include:

• Set and distribute the agenda ahead of time so the team will know what will be addressed, how long it will take, and so they can prepare.
• Put the most important issues first on the agenda to make sure you don’t get distracted with less important discussions and then not have time to dive into the top priorities.
• Make sure it’s clear what you want the outcome to be. (An operating procedure, a decision, a recommendation, etc.)
• Keep your meetings short and to the point.
• Assign topics for individual staff members to report on so that they get involved.
• Report the progress of any long-term goals to keep them fresh in everyone’s mind to motivate everyone to keep working on them.

What about your hostel?

How often does your team have staff meetings?
What subjects do you normally address?
How long do your meetings last?
If member of your team are not working, do they still have to participate?
Do you pay your team for their time at the meetings?
Does the manager conduct the meetings, or does someone else facilitate?
What tips can you offer for running a productive staff meeting?