Whether it’s to break silos between support groups or to help escalate problems to top-level management, efficient meeting structures are necessary to support the daily management of operations. Unfortunately, some meetings are not structured properly which causes time loss in the daily routines of managers and employees.
What are the five common challenges when performing meetings?
- Frontline managers spend a lot of time in meetings.
- Many participants show up unprepared for the meeting.
- There is a lack of standards between meetings across the organization.
- There is a heavy administrative task when following up on actions between meetings.
- The different meetings are poorly connected and create siloed teams.
How do organizations overcome the challenges of inefficient meetings?
- They equip managers to prepare and conduct better meetings.
- They standardize meetings across the organization.
- They separate the meetings according to management levels.
- They define the criteria for the proper escalation of information.
Find out how a digital solution like Tervene helps standardize the different meetings across operational teams.
The Tiered Meeting Structure, from Team Leaders to Top Management
The tiered meeting structure is the set of recurrent meetings that helps management levels and support groups share any information to handle issues. An efficient meeting structure should allow:
- Meetings on multiple management levels in order to create a cascade of information.
- Clear criteria for the escalation of information so a problem can be led to and handled by the proper management level.
- A tool to share files, photos, comments and tasks within the meeting minutes.
- An easy method to provide feedback to team leaders and workers.
- A shift handover report to communicate information to the next shift.
- Collaborative meetings with different departments or support groups.
Daily Management Meetings and Daily Huddles
7:30 AM
Kickoff meeting
↓ ↑
9:00 AM
Daily Management Meeting
↓ ↑
11:00 AM
Tops Manager’s Committee
__
15:30 PM
Shift Handover Meeting or Reporting
Support Groups and Departmental Meetings
Les rencontres de métiers et de départements
- Safety committee
- Improvement meeting
- Quality Assurance meeting
- Governance meetings
- Engineering meeting
- Maintenance
- 1-on-1 meeting
The structure of operational meetings will differ from one organization to the next depending on the industry, management levels and the complexity of the operations. All organizations adopt meeting structures that fit their needs.
The Role of Each Management Level
The tiered meeting structure allows decision-making to happen at the proper management level. The meeting’s talking points should be in link with the specific roles and the hierarchical levels of the meeting’s participants. Thus, managers should easily be able to transfer information to the right people within the organization.
Ideally, the different management levels will each handle issues relevant to their roles and on different time frames. For example, a supervisor will focus on daily shifts and the operational issues that occur within the work week. A manager, with the help of support groups, will handle problems that take place throughout a weekly-monthly time lapse. The top-management committee will then focus on the scope of the monthly, quarterly, and annual periods.
Directors Committee
Tier 3 or Level 3
↓ ↑
Middle Managers – Support Groups
Tier 2 or Level 2
↓ ↑
Frontline managers – Workers
Tier 1 or Level 1
5 Reasons Why Operations Leaders Are Going Digital
1. To Streamline the Cascade of Information Between Management Levels
Gathering all the meetings’ information in one tool allows teams to share information to higher management levels. For example, a team leader can identify an issue on the factory floor, transfer the topic to the production meeting and receive instant feedback. A supervisor could share the same information with the top managers’ committee.
2. To Connect Teams in a Mobile and Paperless Environment
A digital platform connects all the organization’s teams in a paperless environment. It breaks down silos so that the front-line managers can easily share information with the support groups. For example, it streamlines the communication between the supervisor, a safety manager, and the engineering team.
Tervene helped us break silos between departments and increase implication from support groups.
Melina, Operation Director, Canada
3. To Improve the Leader Standard Work (LSW)
The recurrent huddles are essential to sustain the managers’ daily work. A digital management system helps reduce word-to-mouth communication, transcription, paper-based analysis and other administrative burdens. As a result, these managers can perform better daily, weekly, and monthly meetings.
4. To Standardize Meetings and Shift Handovers
A digital meeting solution provides the meeting leader with a framework to better structure meetings and shift handovers. For this reason, worldwide manufacturers such as Safran, Lactalis, and Cascades are going digital to standardize meetings.
We standardized most of our recurring meetings. For example, shift transfer meetings enable better communication from a supervisor to another.
Marie-Anne, Production Director, Canada
5. To Gain Real-time Visibility on the Meeting Subjects
With better visibility on the meeting minutes, all the meeting participants know the due dates and task owners. Since the meeting leader can monitor the latest progress between meetings, it fosters ownership and accountability of the participants towards their tasks.
Digital Meetings with Tervene
It is 65% faster to prepare and conduct a meeting. On average, an organization standardizes 10 meetings, and 71% of talking points originate from Gemba walk & audits.
With Tervene, managers can collaborate before, during and after the meetings in a connected ecosystem. They share the meeting agenda, make decisions, and ensure each task has a clear owner and due date.
Tervene is very useful in managing recurring meetings and their resulting tasks. The ability to transfer tasks from a meeting to another allows for tracking critical tasks collectively.
Human Resources Director at Fortal, France
Simplifying Daily Operations Management With Tervene
With its connected platform, Tervene equips your management team on their quest to operational excellence by supporting the daily control of operations.
Designed for manufacturers, the adaptive platform simplifies daily tasks, standardizes the management and operation control processes, accelerates problem resolution, and improves the communication structure.
