Why hold your meeting outside of your office?

November 25, 2016

Whenever I have had an internal meeting, often what initially looks like it will last a few hours can turn into a whole day affair. Generally someone knocks on the door and takes a member of the meeting out. If it’s a quick word then that’s fine, but inevitably it turns out to be a phone call or someone coming in for an important appointment that was forgotten about.

Often the meeting will get side-tracked into a conversation that isn’t on the agenda, which leads onto another and another; opening up a whole can of worms. Before long, you can find yourself discussing what was on television the night before or where you are going on your next holiday! You then find yourself two hours into the meeting without having gotten past the minutes of the last meeting! We’ve all been there.

A great solution is to take the meeting off-site. By using another location’s meeting or conference room the meeting can be a lot more productive – as time is of the essence and you have stricter time scales with tea/coffee and lunch arriving at a certain time. You also benefit by eating a great lunch made by someone else and not having to clear the mess away afterwards! Another benefit is that a purpose built meeting or conference room will often have stationery for you to use, rather than the scraps of paper you find in your bag, as well as a projector or TV screen to display your presentation on. Fancy!

You can make the meeting more interesting by including an element of team building. I’ve seen delegates blindfolded and guided along by another member of staff before which can really help with team building and putting trust in your colleagues. Another great activity is to build or create something together, the type of thing you saw on Blue Peter or Art Attack over the years.

Outside events are great in the summer and there are no end to the games you can play to get in the team spirit. It’s amazing to see the friendly banter that goes on and it all gets very competitive, which is what the Managing Director wants to see. Hopefully everyone is rewarded at the end of the day with a drink or two!

We have all of the facilities we’ve mentioned at The Chichester Hotel in Wickford, or if you feel that your meeting needs to be held on-site at your location, then consider arranging for some fantastic food to be delivered to your door by Chichester Delivers – our outdoor catering service.