9 Staff Meeting Ideas For Better Engagement

Staff meetings have a bad name and reputation of being long and dry. Because of this, people often avoid meetings, and where they can’t, you can see their dissatisfaction and lack of engagement as employees fidget in their seats, don’t make eye contact, and stare at their screens.

Staff meetings are important to keep employees engaged, and to encourage this engagement, sometimes you have to switch up what you’re used to and think outside of the box. Because your team is creative and diverse, Fellow wanted to share some creative and diverse staff meeting ideas so that you can motivate, engage and inspire your team. 

In this article, we discuss what staff settings are, why they’re so important and 9 creative staff meeting ideas to keep you and your team engaged.

• What are staff meetings? 
• The importance of staff meetings 
• 9 creative staff meeting ideas

What are staff meetings? 

Staff meetings are company-wide meetings, where all of the employees are invited to attend. These meetings bring the whole team together to check in with each other, communicate status updates, progress, any obstacles that need to be overcome, and track goals. Staff meetings can increase engagement, motivation, accountability, and promote creativity. 

The importance of staff meetings 

Staff meetings are important because they bring the whole group together, which probably doesn’t happen often. These meetings give everyone a voice and create a space where the whole team can be seen and heard. It’s also an opportunity for employees to get answers to any questions they may have and to gain a stronger understanding of how the company operates. When you include the whole team in discussions and decisions it’s going to increase team morale, motivation, and productivity. 

9 creative staff meeting ideas

• Kickoff the meeting with a team-building activity 
• Invite a guest speaker
• Leave a section for shoutouts
• Ask people to comment and react
• Start with a win
• Share a recent customer story or insight 
• Take turns to lead the meeting
• Host Lightning Talks
• Create a team ritual

1 Kickoff the meeting with a team-building activity 

A team building activity could be something simple like a game of Jenga or a field trip to an escape room or obstacle course. Nothing gets people energized and ready to collaborate like having them work together in a fun context that takes your mind off of your to-do list. This is one of the top staff meeting ideas for teams that like to get out of the office and think outside the box. You can boost collaboration even more if you ask your tea to come up with some activities that they’d like to try out with their co-workers. 

Pro tip

Use a meeting management tool like Fellow to encourage engagement during your meetings by offering a collaborative agenda so everyone feels inspired to contribute.

Try Fellow for free

2Invite a guest speaker 

Consider inviting a guest speaker to your meeting. Inspire your staff with a visit from a guest speaker who is relevant to your industry. New faces tend to engage the audience more and because they come from outside of your organization, a guest speaker brings a fresh and exciting perspective. If you don’t want to bring someone in from a different organization, consider asking someone to speak from a different department or from the senior leadership team. Anyone who isn’t typically at your staff meeting is going to capture the audience’s attention.

3 Leave a section for shoutouts 

Acknowledging good work and congratulating your team members is going to motivate and keep your employees engaged. This is also going to encourage this standard of performance in the future. Thank your employees for the hard work they’ve put in and give praise where it’s deserved. Shoutouts show your employees their work and efforts are both noticed and valued. It’s important to also encourage the rest of your team to give their colleagues and co-workers shoutouts because this is going to build stronger team morale, encourage collaboration, and strengthen company culture within your group. 

4 Ask people to comment and react in the meeting note 

When you use a collaborative meeting tool like Fellow, your team can actually comment and react directly into your meeting notes. Sometimes adding talking points, action items, and bullets is not enough. While those options are great, they don’t support ongoing discussion and don’t support any sort of emotional reaction. Through the comments function, your team can ask questions, give updates or share their thoughts attached to a specific talking point, action item or bullet point. With the reactions function, team members can use emojis to react to a specific talking point or action item to show support, praise, or simply to participate and engage in the conversation. 

5 Start with a win 

When you choose to start your meeting on a high note, it lightens the mood and makes the employees feel good to be a part of the team’s success. Share any kind of team win, big or small to encourage and inspire your team to keep working towards your organizational goals. If you’re not too tight on time, you can also ask others to share any professional or personal wins from that week, which is going to bring you and your team that much closer together.

6 Share a recent customer story or insight 

Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the impact of the work that you’re doing if you don’t work in a customer or client-facing position. For these team members, it’s important to share any recent customer stories or insights. This doesn’t necessarily mean only bringing up positive success stories, but also highlighting customer criticisms and where the team may have fallen short. Sharing this constructive criticism in a staff meeting allows your team to work together and brainstorm ways to improve and deliver even more successfully next time. 

7 Take turns to lead the meeting 

So that you can involve and engage as many individuals as possible, think about rotating the meeting facilitator. This gives the opportunity for everyone to have a turn guiding the conversation, speaking about what they feel is most important and it also allows team members to facilitate using their own style. This means that you can learn from one another and take note of different meeting styles. It’s also a lot less boring to listen to different people speak at each meeting. This empowers employees to develop their leadership skills and step outside of their comfort zones.

8 Host Lightning Talks 

Another of our team meeting ideas is to host lightning talks. When you give the opportunity for everyone to speak in the room, it’s got to be kept clear, concise and to the point. Not only is this a great team building activity, but it also strengthens communication skills by encouraging information to be shared in a thoughtful and effective manner. This makes staff meetings more inclusive and by giving everyone the chance to speak and share their thoughts, you’re showing your team that everyone’s voice matters and that everyone has something valuable to contribute. 

9 Create a team ritual 

Creating a team ritual can be a creative, out-of-the-box staff meeting exercise that could really help with bringing your team closer together. In order to come up with your own team ritual, consider hosting an open discussion with your team to see what kind of ideas employees may have. You want a ritual that promotes positive thinking and that helps employees take a step back from their own immediate to-do list, which allows everyone to bond over creative ideas and like-minded solutions. A small activity that encourages inclusive, rotating communication and the sharing of positive insights will help you and your team build stronger team morale and collaboration.  

Parting advice 

Creative team meeting ideas are necessary in order to keep your employees engaged, encouraged, and productive. Team building exercises that are incorporated into your staff meetings are a great way to inspire your team and to avoid boring them in your recurring meetings. Consider switching up your traditional way of hosting your staff meetings and try using more creative, inclusive, and more engaging ways of facilitating your meetings. You can even ask your team which staff meeting ideas they feel would be the most effective for your group. Don’t be afraid to try new things until you find something that feels effective and is well-received by the rest of the team. Sometimes, these team-building exercises can feel a little silly at first, but they’re worth the laugh since they’re highly effective. 

As always, it’s a pleasure seeing you on the Fellow blog. If you found this article helpful, be sure to pass it along to a friend or colleague. We’ll see you next time!