Effective executive meetings have a substantial influence on an organization’s performance. As the corporate world becomes more complicated, executives are confronted with new problems and possibilities, and meetings, when conducted appropriately, are critical in navigating obstacles and capitalizing on opportunities. As a result, the significance of good company management cannot be overstated.
Admins: A Guide to Providing Administrative Support for Effective Meetings
As a result, meeting administrators play a critical role. It is the responsibility of individuals providing administrative assistance to ensure that the meeting process works smoothly from the pre-meeting phase of gathering the agenda and compiling meeting materials through the post-meeting distribution of the meeting minutes. Administrators are the glue that holds the meeting together, as well as the oil that keeps the engine running smoothly.
As a result, the function of an administrator has a great deal of responsibility and is a time-consuming and difficult undertaking. We’ll start looking at the elements of success in providing administrative assistance for meetings in this essay and whitepaper.
What is the best way to set up a meeting?
For a variety of reasons, organizing executive meetings is difficult. Because of the rapid pace of change, as well as a complicated mix of stakeholders and high expectations, individuals who provide administrative assistance for meetings are under a lot of stress.
Administrators are responsible for not only gathering and disseminating all required management information, but also for putting up an effective meeting agenda. This activity may appear straightforward in isolation, but when a variety of stakeholders and participants are required to contribute on agenda design, each contributing their own contribution, the task soon becomes considerably more involved.
As a result, the process of planning a meeting entails:
- ensuring that everyone who needs to be there is invited
- Ensure that all meeting materials are delivered on time.
- Creating and disseminating a meeting agenda with defined roles and duties (we recommend utilizing a meeting agenda template for this), and encouraging all attendees to collaborate and prepare.
This appears to be a simple process, but there is a lot of possibility for mistake and complications. Are documents, for example, to be printed on paper? If that’s the case, how do you handle document modifications at the last minute? Also, how do you handle the issue of version control if all attendees are active and contributing prior to the meeting? After all, the last thing you want is for meeting attendees to be working with out-of-date data. This would be a waste of time.
Who is responsible for setting up a meeting?
As you can see, a meeting administrator’s work is both varied and crucial. But who is responsible for this? The answer isn’t straightforward because these responsibilities might be shared among several people and vary per company.
However, in our experience, meeting administrative assistance is frequently given by one or more of the following:
- They typically assist the Corporate Secretary with some of the more administrative aspects of meeting management, such as coordinating document revisions or printing and delivering meeting materials.
- Participants’ Executive Assistants: If individuals attending a meeting are members of the C-Suite or senior management, it’s probable that their Executive Assistant will be in charge of providing administrative assistance. This will entail gathering data, monitoring diaries, and, in certain situations, working via a proxy to ensure that all appropriate preparations are completed.