The Staff Meeting Template in SoWork is a simple path to a successful and productive team meeting. Staff meetings help foster open communication and transparency within your team. They’re a great way to stay up to date on your team’s objectives, celebrate wins, and ask questions about team happenings.

They’re usually driven by a team lead and occur on a regular cadence. They could be run horizontally (role-based), and include all managers across various areas of the company, or they could be run vertically, and include an entire department (design, engineering, etc.).

In SoWork, staff meetings empower and engage teammates, leaving them feeling informed and excited about the work they’re doing and the goals they’re striving toward.

4 Benefits of Using the Staff Meeting Template

1️⃣ Meeting Summaries via Sophia Bot, SoWork’s generative AI Office Assistant

With this staff meeting template, you’re able to use SoWork’s AI generated Meeting Summaries (created by Sophia Bot). This Smart Office tool allows you to get the most out of your meeting by providing clear, section by section summaries and tidy action items. With SoWork’s Sophia Bot, you have your next priorities lined up right away, saving you time and energy.

When the staff meeting begins, click the Sophia Bot icon under your video tile - you’ll then see Sophia Bot begin typing. From here, your meeting content is being transcribed and summarized automatically, and a note with your Meeting Summary will be available to you and your team within minutes of leaving the meeting. You can access these notes at any point afterwards as they’ll be stored within your personal Meeting Summaries Codex on the SoWork app.

2️⃣ Feeling like you’re really together

With the SoWork Staff Meeting Template, you’re able to collect early and linger around afterwards, because you’re in a virtual office! Your team can literally see that your design teammate is coming out of a deep work period and heading over to the meeting area, or that the engineering team is gathering around to discuss an upcoming release.

This buzzing office energy fosters deeper connections, spontaneous conversations, and ideation that drives innovation, and just isn’t possible on a scheduled Zoom or Teams call.

When using SoWork, your team will truly feel like you’re sitting beside each other in a real office. You’re able to sit beside your favourite co-worker and grab people on the way out the door when the meeting ends. This feeling of togetherness is key for distributed and remote teams, helping your team feel aligned and ready to crush some work!

3️⃣ Smooth collaboration and team alignment

Staff meetings allow your team to plan each week effectively, see what still needs to be completed, and what’s already been done. They’re excellent for getting updates on a project or hearing about specific challenges your team’s encountering. Does your engineer need help reviewing the project scope? Do they have a question about some design considerations? These questions get your team aligned, and set folks up for smooth hand-offs and collaborative sprints.

Further, it’s easier to highlight potential problems, like a pesky bug or catching something that’s going to be a roadblock. With this, the team can solve issues quickly, and the project can move forward as planned. Surfacing this information regularly has a huge impact on velocity, and is key for high performing teams.

When these meetings are carried out well, the team becomes more inclined to communicate on tasks and projects. Teamwork like this gets multiple eyes on projects and tasks, helping everyone feel confident when offering assistance or solutions wherever they’re needed. Getting another design teammate’s feedback could be exactly what was missing.

4️⃣ Monitoring your team’s workload

Another benefit of staff meetings is maintaining a clear picture of what work your team has on their plate. Are they overloaded? Do they have room to take on a new project? If you’re finding that certain team members have too many tasks on the go, your team lead is able to get a good sense of what others are working on and if they can help out.

Redistributing the workload as required leads to less stress and higher quality work across the board. Even more, staff meetings are critical for assessing team needs in advance - another great way to maintain velocity and make sure no tasks are left behind.

How to Use the Staff Meeting Template

After clicking on the “Try Template” button, we’ll guide you through a quick onboarding flow, where we’ll make a virtual office. Your meeting template will be inside this office, and after onboarding, you’ll land in your template - ready to try it out with your team!

At SoWork, because we work beside each other in a virtual office, we’re able to see when people start gathering around before the meeting begins. So, when others in the office see their teammates collecting in the meeting area a few minutes early, they know they’re welcome to walk over and catch up. Or, maybe they want to quickly grab their supervisor and ask them a question before the meeting to get extra clarity. Being able to collaborate with your team on the fly and ask questions when needed is instrumental for a successful skip level meeting.

When the staff meeting begins, we follow our pre-established agenda, while giving time for extra context and answering questions as we go. We always celebrate our successes and orient around the tasks that need to be completed each week. After the meeting is finished, we often break off into spontaneous conversations to discuss the meeting content further.

SoWork’s multitude of meeting related features make hosting meetings engaging and productive. You’re able to blast emojis - and even a teammate’s avatar - to celebrate progress, raise your avatar’s hand when you have a question (and lower it again when it’s been answered), screenshare multiple screens, use whiteboards together and so much more. You can also customize your Meeting Zone by adding relevant images and documents for your team to view before, after, or during your staff meeting.

FAQ

✨ How do I get the most out of my staff meeting, and what’s the best way to prep? ✨

There are quite a few best practices for running a staff meeting. It’s ideal when everyone who’s in the meeting works closely together. A good way to do this is to separate teams by what they’re working on (by goal, project, team type - design, engineering, marketing, etc.). This helps ensure that all of the information being shared is relevant to everyone. Or, as mentioned above, it could be a staff meeting just for execs, directors and team leads.

To effectively prepare for your team’s staff meeting, decide on your meeting cadence, and ensure the meeting purpose and expectations are clear. The cadence of a staff meeting can vary quite a bit, so it’s best to choose whatever makes the most sense for you team, according to how your weeks are structured. A well regarded practice is to hold staff meetings at the same time and on the same day to reduce complexity, for example, every third Wednesday at 10AM.

As part of the staff meeting agenda, teams will include announcements, anything they’d like to show to the team (perhaps a quick visual of their current project), and often do any strategizing or planning that’s required as it’s easy to get feedback.

✨ What do I do after my staff meeting? ✨

Tweaking your team’s process over time allows for maximum efficiency and staff meeting impact. As the staff meetings go on, consider if there’s anything that could be improved.

For example:

✨ Do your meetings always run late?

✨ Does the timing only work for certain people and not at all for others?

✨ Are the meetings happening too frequently or not frequently enough?

✨ Are there some teammates that never show up?

✨ Are critical topics being discussed and problem solved?

Encourage teammates to ask any questions that come up afterwards, and organize any of your related tasks or work blocks. With your staff meeting in a virtual office, your team can end the meeting ‘walking out together’. Engaging in those spontaneous conversations foster bonding and innovation - just breakout into groups afterwards with your avatars, no meeting links or calendar invites required.