Staff Meetings: Successful? Needed?

                    At one of my previous properties we had a staff meeting. During the meeting, one of the associates had her head on her hand. She was completely bored and disinterested. It didn't occur to me until much later, that the meeting itself was that boring and completely unnecessary. We got nothing accomplished that couldn't have been handled differently, and without 2 hours!

• Ask yourself if you really need a staff meeting. Maybe you just need a better challenge identification and resolution plan.
• If your department closes at a certain time, than it is much easier to have everyone together. With a set and adhered to minutes and format, a staff meeting may work very well with that model. 
• Positions like the front office, which never close pose a serious logistical challenge. Why not use your pre shift lineups? Is this information both shifts need to have? Do these items pertain to all or a specific shifts? There should be an ongoing challenge/solution board where everyone can add their input and within a certain timeframe, is solved.

• A front office meeting is created, set, cancelled, and rescheduled.
• Herein lies the problem. If you don't have the information enough to schedule a date and stick to it, you're in trouble. Get a consensus first. Don't waste paper reprinting posts for the office. The more you change the date makes the date and the event itself seem unimportant.

• Schedule the meeting on a day that the most people are already working on.
• Staff meetings should be a desirable thing. You don't want your 12 hour a day teammates having to come in for 2 hours on their day off. They won't be happy to be there.
• ASK.  On occasion you will find someone that doesn't mind because they have to be in the area anyway.

• Allow people to park on site.
• This is ridiculous when it doesn't happen. Why not show more contempt for your staff by making them park in a lot, or battle downtown traffic just to pay 10-20 dollars to park to come to your meeting. This is just stupid, and plain mean.

• Assign proper coverage.
• A GIANT morale killer: After the meeting and on shift, they have to go back and correct everything from the last 2 hours, and field complaints that nothing ran properly. Schedule proper, trained coverage during the meeting.

• Have food and beverage and do it right. Don't have your assistant pick up a pizza last minute.
• You ask people to come in on their day off. And besides that, your team is the reason you are there. Make it nice! This is an easy way to show appreciation. Have lunch set up. It doesn't have to be crazy. Nothing too filling. Some nice finger foods, hye rollers and whatnot. Why not use it as a chance to debut some of the restaurants new dishes? This is the worst with properties that have large food and beverage establishments. You go to a staff meeting and "oh look, a cookie" NO. Your people bust their butts and put up with a lot. The least you can do is feed them well.

• Keep it closed door.
• Remember the staff member that almost dozed off? This was during a point when the G.M. came in and launched into a 30 minute story about something completely irrelevant.
• People are already there on their day off. Be relevant, have the meeting, and get everyone on their way. Part of protecting morale is remembering people have a life outside of work.

• Remember why you are there.
• A staff meeting is not a giant question/answer session. The purpose of a staff meeting is not to figure things out. That is a brainstorming session. You are there to speak to the staff about new changes, procedures etcetera. A few questions can be taken, but prompt your staff to see you with specific questions for one on one sessions. This is so you know the information is communicated properly and with complete understanding, to the individual.
• You should have an ongoing challenges and problem solving forum with the staff where ideas and solutions are constantly being investigated and put into place within a certain time frame. A staff meeting is too difficult to arrange just to nail down specific issues.