Making The Most of Staff Meetings

How can we improve staff meetings?

Are your staff meetings filled with information that could frankly be an email? Boring meetings can really create a lull in staff morale. Here are some ways to spice up your staff meetings, getting the best from your team.

Improving Staff Meetings

• Begin with a five minute discussion point: highlights of the week, moments of gratitude, something new that’s been learnt, your favourite lesson this week. This engages everyone and encourages reflection.
• At the start of the year, ask the team to vote on the types of CPD they’d appreciate. Use your school action plan to make suggestions, examples might include: marking workload, maths, spelling, mental health, planning etc.
• Leave key dates and mundane day to day information to an email and ensure these are communicated on the calendar. Staff meetings that are filled with managerial information are a waste of time.
• If you’re looking for things to ‘fill’ a meeting one week, don’t have one! Staff are guaranteed to love the extra time.
• Empower middle leaders by asking them to lead parts of the staff meeting to develop the team.
• Stick to the timings. A normal weekly meeting should be an hour or less and ideally only occur once a week. If your meetings are regularly going over time or happening on multiple evenings, something isn’t quite right.
• Bring treats. Enough said.

Why is this a good strategy?

A staff meeting can often be the only occasion that the whole team gather together. Exploit this sacred time by making sure it is used as effectively as possible.

Tip

Host staff meetings in different classrooms to showcase  a range of learning environments. Stand up for meetings. Even better – get outside!