Asynch-Friendly Meeting Practices

Meetings are key for us to align, make decisions, and drive things forward. However, meetings often end up being real-time by default. By intentionally incorporating asynch-friendly practices in how we meet, more people can contribute and connect regardless of timezone or availability.

Enabling employees to participate in meetings asynchronously is key for organizations embracing flexible work arrangements. Whether attending live or catching up later by reading notes or watching recordings, everyone should have access to critical information and discussions.

Here are some tips to make meetings more inclusive. Specific areas to focus on include scheduling, preparation, recording, consent, and sharing of meetings.

Scheduling

Default to asynchronous communication to share information and gather input when possible to avoid meeting overload.

Please be mindful of “Meeting-free Mondays.” We do this to allow everyone to ramp up into the week without being sidetracked by meetings on day one, and also to avoid having to reschedule recurring Monday meetings for the numerous US holidays that fall on Mondays.

Use Recurring Meeting Slots

Our recurring meeting slots allow team members to plan around regularly scheduled meetings. This provides predictability.

  • Check if agenda items can be covered in a recurring slot before scheduling a one-off meeting.

Use Shared Calendars

We maintain domain-specific shared team calendars for transparency into upcoming meetings.

  • Set meetings directly in these calendars or invite the calendar as a guest

Required vs Optional Attendees

  • Clearly indicate in the meeting invitation if attendance is required or optional.

  • Required attendees are critical decision makers or contributors for the given topic. Their direct participation is needed live or via recording.

  • Optional attendees are relevant stakeholders but may choose to join live based on availability/interest rather than necessity.

  • When determining if someone should be required vs optional, consider what role they play and if progress can be made with or without their direct involvement.

  • Be clear up front so attendees understand the expectation around their attendance.

Timezones

When scheduling one-off meetings, be mindful that our teams work across timezones ranging from Central European Time (CET) to US Pacific Time (PST) - spanning over 9 hours.

  • If you absolutely need someone to participate live, please be sure to check their README for their working hours and preferred meeting times.

Preparation

Sourcing Agenda Before Meeting

Use the appropriate Slack channel to source agenda items from team members prior to meetings. This allows people to contribute discussion topics even if they won’t attend live. As an attendee, to find the agenda thread on Slack try searching for the word “Agenda” to see recent agenda threads.

  • Be up front in the agenda about the purpose of meeting and any desired outcomes. For example:

    • Deciding on $50/month or $75/month for new Pro plan pricing

    • Getting Director of Marketing’s go-ahead on social media rollout strategy

    • Addressing cross-team confusion around design handoff process before end of quarter

  • Explicitly call out if concrete decisions need to be made or if items are for ongoing discussion purposes.

  • Avoid using meetings for status reports!

Recording & Sharing

Review our Video Recording and Retention Policy, which you received at onboarding.

  • Employees and consultants provide baseline consent to record meetings as part of workplace policies. However, attendees may rescind consent for specific meetings (by attending asynch, turning off voice or video, etc), or specify content that should be edited out in the recording

  • If outside parties such as clients will be present, explain why we record meetings, how recordings will be used internally, and our data retention policy. Obtain verbal consent on record.

Recording with Bluedot vs Google Meet Native

Our video sharing platform is Bluedot, which provides a Chrome extension that records, transcribes, and generate notes using customizable templates. Bluedot is installed by default in your c15.io Chrome profile.

  • Review Bluedot’s intro how-to videos

  • When to use record via the native Google Meets recording feature: At the moment, Bluedot runs in your browser only (a meeting bot that can join as an attendee is in the works), so this option may not work well for you if you have bandwidth or lossage issues with your internet connection. If you record via Meets, upload to Bluedot when the recording is processed.

  • If you use native Google Meet recording, please delete the recording in your Google Drive after uploading to Bluedot, to minimize the overhead of meeting the retention policy.

  • Post questions you may have about using Bluedot to the #help_tools Slack channel.

Sharing via Bluedot and Slack

After adding a video to Bluedot, move it to a Collection that best fits the meeting purpose and audience.

Certain collections in Bluedot (Collection name starts with “#”) automatically post new meetings to appropriate Slack channels.

If not auto-posted, post meeting recordings to Slack easy asynchronous access – for example, as a comment in the meeting thread you started to source the agenda items.

Feedback

Let us know if you have any other suggestions for creating an asynchronous-inclusive meetings culture! Drop your comments here, and/or post to #_horizontal-culture.