Ms Teams can be a valuable tool to improve governance and aid inclusive meetings

Over the last few years, everyone has had to adapt to working remotely, and the way organisations work has changed.?

The use of cloud technology and innovative solutions have evolved. Microsoft Teams (Ms Teams) is the “chat-based workspace in Office 365” that bring people, conversations, content, and tools together. During the Covid-19 pandemic its use accelerated as it allowed everyone to keep working and to stay connected when working from home.

Most employees have returned to working from the office, although many have more flexible working arrangements. Ms Teams continue to be a very popular software and an important tool to shift successfully from on-site to remote to hybrid working. It can help you to be more organised and employees and team members can collaborate more efficiently and achieve more.

Improve governance and aid inclusive meetings

The directors can participate better in an inclusive and effective meeting where they have access to the relevant documentation. Keeping the board reports, minutes and action points to Ms Teams means that all directors can easily access these documents before, during and after the meeting.?

Ms Teams also allow remote workers to feel included as they can participate in meetings by video conference.?

Key elements that make meetings more efficient:

• Ensure that all directors have easy access to the action points so that the action log can be kept up-to-date between meetings (this can reduce the time spent in meetings considerably).
• Provide easy access to all the relevant documents in good time before the meeting so that everyone can prepare and contribute to the discussion.?
• Record meetings so that the minutes can be prepared and signed off more efficiently.

?Key elements that make meetings more inclusive:

• Share an agenda so that everyone knows what to expect and can prepare accordingly.
• Send meeting packs at least one week in advance, and follow up with action items?so attendees can engage in the meeting and complete their tasks.
• Begin and end meetings on time.
• Encourage attendees to use their video functionality.
• Make it clear who is in the meeting and why.

How Virteffic can assist your organisation

Virteffic has a team of qualified chartered secretaries and experienced individuals who assist with all aspects relating to meetings. We can assist with writing minutes and also with all the administrative activities before, during and after the meeting.?

In the last year, we have done a lot of work for clients to organise their action points, board reports and meeting experience – all using Ms Teams.

To be as efficient as you can be, we offer a service that can assist in making your working environment easily accessible and organised. Organisations are busy with their everyday tasks, and some may not have the capacity to organise or update their structure. Virteffic can set up a simple and effective working environment for you within Ms Teams (provided that you have an Office 365 account).

An example service package would be the set-up of the following:

• Teams Channel
• Action List (including action, deadline, owner, status, minute reference etc)
• Files (where terms of reference, board packs, minutes and other documents can be stored in a central and secure location)
• Board calendar (in a simple form with dates for the quarterly meetings only, or we can assist in setting up an agenda planner/governance calendar to give a good overview of the topics to be covered during the year).

We can provide training and support so that you can manage the account in-house once set up, or we can provide long-term support.

How does it work?

We use the channels function on Teams, this can be public within your organisation or private for invited team members only. It is a way to connect to people within a team or project and allows easy access to content and tools. No more setting up permissions for files and waiting for access, it’s as simple as adding a member and they have the permissions to access what they need.

Find out more

You can visit our?website?to find out more about Virteffic.?Get in Touch?if you have any questions or?request a fee proposal?if you are in interested in any of?our services.

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