Here are some tips to help company secretaries turn meetings from time-wasters into efficient ways to get things done. The article will show how they can draw up and approve the agenda, how to inform the participants about the event, and organize secure communication in a few clicks.
How to optimize the work of a modern company secretary?
The management process at all levels is becoming increasingly complex. Its tasks cannot be solved without the involvement of many specialists. Meetings allow us to consider tasks that require the exchange of views and information on emerging issues with the participation of managers and performers. No activity, event, or process can match the importance of maintaining the health of an organization as meetings. Despite the negative attitude towards meetings in the corporate world, they have a decisive influence on the organization’s life. They must share information, develop team decisions, and notify employees of important changes. Management practice shows that 90% of fruitful ideas arise from the exchange of opinions.
A clear organization of meetings contributes to an increase in the efficiency of the work of all its participants. The most important thing in organizing meetings is preparing the necessary documentation and providing it to all participants. In this case, the company secretary has a central role because he or she is responsible for all technical and organizational aspects of the board meeting. Furthermore, secretaries can use various services and other digital tools to make them more productive and automate their daily routines.
Besides, office work, management, control of management, reporting, and its analysis, search, input, and updating of information, information exchange between departments of the office, and interaction with counterparties are carried out using various application programs. A modern company secretary, regardless of the specifics of the enterprise, daily works with word processors and spreadsheets, searches for information on the Internet and legal reference systems, processes incoming letters, and responds to them.
5 Best digital technologies for company secretary
So, professional specificity requires the use of the following digital technologies by company secretaries:
- Board management software
This platform provides several ways to visualize project tasks, collaborate with colleagues, automate workflows, share files, message team members, etc. The software also ensures pre-made templates, unlimited whiteboards, analytics, and reporting. In addition, in the board software, the secretary can easily upload all related to the meeting materials, generate addenda and minutes, etc. Here you may read about paperless board meeting:
- Virtual data room
This software solution is more than just a file-sharing tool. It is a full-fledged database in which all downloaded or received legally significant electronic documents are securely stored. The data room provides a central workspace for users throughout the organization.
- Doodle
It is a very useful meeting scheduling software for any organization that wants to find the best time to schedule a meeting. This software comes with a built-in polling feature that accepts meeting participants’ votes for the most appropriate time and thus sets the meeting according to the result.
- Google Docs
The service is similar to Microsoft Word but is convenient for collaboration. It is convenient for the secretary to create documents, share them with colleagues or send links. All comments and changes he and his colleagues make are displayed in real-time.
- Evernote
This popular digital notepad is great for managing a large collection of text, images, and voice notes. Evernote offers a tagging system that you can use to tag added entries. For greater convenience, tags can be grouped and nested within each other.