Create agendas that drive meeting efficiency: Tips for clerks
When Olivia was brought on as the clerk for her town council, she inherited a complicated and, frankly, confusing meeting-agenda process. Her predecessor had wrangled countless emails and lots of follow-up requests to council members to generate and get approval on each agenda, which wasn’t a productive way to spend workdays.
But Olivia turned the whole process around.
Her approach? Olivia has embraced automation for developing and sharing the agenda and other materials. Her efficiency-based approach has simplified her work, made her council’s service more efficient and boosted transparency for her community.
Let’s look at the difference this process makes and how your board or council can benefit from modernized agenda development.
What is a structured, efficient agenda for local government meetings?
On its face, an agenda is a simple document: a written plan for a meeting that outlines topics for board discussion and formats them in the proper order. While creating an agenda sounds simple enough, the manner in which clerks structure the agenda drives the meeting’s efficiency.
The structure of the agenda makes it easy for the board chair or meeting facilitator to keep the meeting flowing and on track. Agendas can be simple or complex depending on the meeting requirements and topics being covered. Municipal clerks can customize the agenda according to the needs of the council.
With the right online agenda software, the process is fast, easy and efficient.
Benefits of an efficiency-driven agenda
An agenda that supports efficiency is a win for everyone. It gives clarity and focus to the important work of the board and ensures better time management and clearer decision-making in meetings. For elected or appointed board members, this smarter use of their time is invaluable.
For the community, the improved documentation supports local government transparency and accountability by helping everyone understand what is happening in the municipality or school system.
For the clerk or administrator, an accurate, realistic, clear agenda helps minimize questions from participants; eases meeting planning; and makes creating minutes and other documentation around meetings faster.
Tips for creating an efficient agenda
Creating an efficient meeting agenda is a matter of observing a few best practices.
- Begin planning the agenda early. The week following the previous meeting isn't too early to start planning the next agenda. Early planning helps the agenda-preparer and the meeting participants as well.
- Order your agenda items according to priorities. Council members and other attendees dislike meetings that run slowly and run overtime. Place the most important issues first and work with the board chair to keep items within a reasonable timeframe.
- Include the right amount of detail. Certain agenda items may call for a breakdown of key points. Seeing the key points listed helps attendees focus on the main issues and should help to focus discussions.
- Be realistic and flexible in scheduling. One of the most difficult tasks is assigning a certain number of minutes for each agenda item. It helps to build in a little time for flexibility if you can. Place items with priority higher on the agenda. If things get too far off the timeframe, an experienced board chair will know that it’s time to table the issue or move it to a committee for further exploration.
- Highlight items that require a decision. Make action items clear and give board members enough time to review the issues and do any research or ask questions before the meeting. This will cut down on the time council members will need to spend in discussion and debate.
- List the names of those who will be presenting topics. Meeting members will have the agenda in front of them and be more prepared to follow quickly behind the previous speaker.
- Solicit feedback from members on how to improve future meetings. Some clerks find it helpful to leave some space at the end of the agenda for members to evaluate the agenda, so clerks can improve the process in the future.
How Diligent Community helps with agenda management
Diligent Community has been designed to help the local government clerk, leadership team and stakeholders in building a better meeting-management process. Here are a few highlights:
Agenda packet process automation
Clerks use the Diligent Community Meeting Manager feature to create an accurate and efficient agenda packet, including a cover sheet and attachments. Digital agendas and attachments simplify the entire workflow into a single interface.
A speedy template-based process
Clerks may have a certain format for their council meetings that they’ve used for a long time. The Meeting Manager tool allows them to use that format and improve or customize it as needed. The ability to customize the agenda allows clerks to design either a brief or detailed agenda format within minutes. Clerks can add or delete sections to adjust for changes in the agenda from one meeting to the next. All they have to do is drag new sections over to the agenda to create agenda items in a snap. They can also drag sections away from the agenda that they don’t need.
Simplified approvals
Once the agenda is complete, clerks can preview the fully completed, formatted agenda and make any necessary additions or corrections. After the preview, the clerk can send out the agenda packet for various rounds of approvals using an automated workflow.
Better accessibility
Meeting participants can view the agenda online before the meeting, so they can prepare for it ahead of time and follow along with it during the meeting.
Ian Dudla, Chief Administration Officer, Municipality of Resolute Bay, observes,
Read more about the experience of the Municipality of Resolute Bay.
Secure permissions
The program also allows clerks to set user permissions so that only certain individuals can view sensitive or confidential documents. It’s one of many ways local government staff can help protect their communities as part of a digital transformation strategy.
Faster meeting minutes
Starting with a completed agenda and a livestream transcript, local clerks can use Diligent Community’s AI-generated minutes feature to create this important follow-up document quickly, saving time for review and any edits needed.
An efficient agenda process is an invaluable contribution to the effectiveness of local governments. Diligent Community makes it easy with the right features. Let us show you how.
