According to research by McKinsey & Company, directors spend an average of 24 days per year on board matters. However, they also said that they would ideally want to spend 30 days a year on their board work.
So, while Board meetings are a vital part of the running of your organisation - being key for all stakeholders to discuss and action complex matters that affect your service and your clients – there may be hidden costs that are being exacerbated when they don’t go as planned.
In this article, we’re exploring the true cost of Board meetings, and how your organisation can get the most out of this valuable time.
What are common challenges faced during Board meetings?
In the bustling and collaborative social care sector, it can be difficult keeping your Board meetings on track. Common challenges may include:
- Over running
- Delays sharing confidential papers
- Actions not being documented
- Meeting objectives not being achieved
- Missing or incorrect versions of paperwork circulated
What are the hidden costs of Board meetings?
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Time Cost
In many industries, time is money. And in a busy service like social care, with demand for care reaching 2 million in 2022/23, it is an increasingly valuable asset. But you may be surprised just how much your Board meetings can cost when you think about who your attendees are, and how long that meeting takes.
Let’s say you hold a monthly Board meeting. The attendees consist of each Board director, the meeting administrator, and perhaps even external stakeholders such as a local authority representative, healthcare professional or another relevant third party.
When you take into account your attendee’s salaries and compare the hourly cost for that meeting to the outcomes that were achieved, can you be assured that you’re getting the most value out of that time?
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Lost Opportunity Cost
During a Board meeting, your participants main focus will be on the discussion at hand, making decisions and actioning next steps so your organisation can effectively provide care to your clients.
However, when the meeting lacks direction or the circulated papers are wrong, the discussion can get derailed. Then, you frustratingly spend even more time getting back on track, reschedule another meeting, delay those planned actions and potentially miss out on opportunities that you may have otherwise had the time to focus on.
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Resource Cost
The cost of prepping a Board meeting is another key expense that can get overlooked, particularly if your meetings have a blend of virtual and in-person attendees. That’s because as well as the price of printing wasteful paper documents or doing the coffee run, resources include any travel costs, video conferencing tools, and any other equipment or supplies you and your participants may need to attend the meeting.
How to reduce the cost of Board meetings
1. Get organised
The first step you can take to help manage the cost of your Board meetings is to make sure your attendees are equipped with everything they need.
Going into a Board meeting properly prepared can reduce the time spent getting everyone up and running with the agenda. Plus, in social care, it may even be the case that your stakeholders have multiple Board meetings to attend and can easily get overwhelmed by various agendas and documents.
So, circulate digital meeting packs in advance so your participants can review the materials, confirm their attendance and prepare questions before the meeting takes place. Using Meeting Management software to do this (rather than email or printing hardcopies) means any confidential data - such as clinical reports or sensitive records – are always up to date and above all, secure.
2. Define timescales
As you know, Board meetings can quite easily get disrupted, especially in a busy sector like social care as your attendees likely have their own demanding schedules and priorities they want to discuss. So, while you’re planning out your agenda and setting clear objectives for the meeting, you may want to allocate a duration to each section.
That way, attendees have an idea of how long each agenda item should take. But it also helps to keep the focus on the discussion at hand, reducing the risk of unnecessary tangents that can make the meeting overrun.
And once your participants have agreed on next steps, you can assign an owner and set a due date for when that action needs to be completed. Meeting Management software can even send automatic reminders to them, keeping them accountable and actions on track.
3. Evaluate the outcomes
Once the Board meeting has concluded, you may want to think about whether the cost of the discussion was worth the outcomes you expect to achieve. Did you have the right attendees to do what needs to be done? Could resources and time be used better in the future?
Perhaps look over the minutes, the votes and the actions, to get a clear picture of what was achieved. When you can evaluate and identify how that discussion can be improved, you can work on streamlining the process to make the meeting outcomes more efficient and effective.
Plus, having all this information available at the click of a button means you’re no longer working from memory or scrambling through emails to find what you’re looking for.
Meeting Management Solution
Board meetings are a vital part of your organisations ability to deliver high-quality social care and shouldn’t be slowed down by ineffective and costly processes.
Our user-friendly Meeting Management software is designed to help Board members and stakeholders collaborate with ease, with enhanced efficiency and security.
To see the software in action, register to our webinar: What are the true costs of your Board Meetings?