With technology ever evolving and online collaborations on the rise, minute taking can seem like an old-fashioned approach to recording a business meeting. However, it does still have its place and can benefit a business in numerous ways, especially those who are new to running a company and start-ups.
As a quick refresher, minutes are notes recorded by an allocated individual, often a PA or secretary, in order to summarize what has been discussed at a meeting. Done correctly, they will highlight the meeting chronologically and succinctly, including important information such as event dates, deadlines, who said what, budget concerns and suggestions.
Why are minutes important?
Minutes are important for a number of reasons. To begin with, it’s important to have a record of meetings that have taken place in order to act on information. Often, once out of the meeting, important information may be forgotten, so having that record gives everyone involved a reference point when it comes to carrying out what has been discussed.
For those employees who don’t attend the meeting, but will be working on some of the things discussed, it’s a valuable record to use as a starting point for carrying out their job. Further to this, it means that workers can effectively stay on track, with clear deadlines and definitions, without the need to ask others in the office or type up their own notes.
Minutes are also important for absent members of staff and as a tool to avoid arguments over who decided what and when.
How they can help avoid failure
Record keeping is an important aspect to every business and keeping minutes is just another instance of this. By looking back at previous meetings, managers can track the success of certain projects by seeing instantly what was discussed and imagined for each one.
Budgets can be examined to see where they can be improved, or when funds can be added to improve various aspects of the business and information from minutes can be included in the company’s annual report, giving an effective yearly overview, which has all of the necessary information included.
The performance of suppliers can be tracked too, using information such as when they were first used, how much budget was allocated and how they have performed any work for the company. This kind of information is invaluable for keeping tabs on suppliers and service providers to ensure the company is getting the best deal.
Communication
In business, another important factor is communication and this is where minutes really come into their own. Without minutes, everybody would be required to remember what happened during a meeting and non-attendant staff would receive a watered down version, often which will have changed from what actually happened.
Taking minutes and having a clear and concise overview of everything discussed in a meeting will make for a happier team, who are more productive. It also promotes effective collaboration as everyone is on the same page from the start.
Collaboration is a bit of a buzzword at the moment and this is because it’s very effective and has been proven to increase productivity. For a company that is just finding its feet, this is priceless, as a productive and happy team will always be an asset to any business.
This has recently been further confirmed by the introduction of social intranet where an office network has its own kind of social network, something on which minutes can easily be distributed and collaborated on with little fuss.
Minute taking has been an invaluable business tool for many years and should never be discounted because of advances in technology. By capturing an organization’s most important decisions, communicating them clearly and keeping a concise record, businesses can safeguard against any problems they may experience in the future.
Effective record-keeping, communication and productivity increase, budget tracking and the well-being of employees are all key take-out points that every new or small up and coming business should bear in mind and apply when it comes to a building a successful company.
Written by Ellie Boyd- Video and writing journalist for Payday Angels- A small company who are taking it upon themselves to tackle the financial crisis within the payday loan industry. We review other payday lenders- for example read our Payday UK review here. As we are new to building our company up, we have relied heavily on tracking our every move, in order to develop business more efficiently and learn from previous mistakes made.