Have you found that you waste hours in meetings every week? 

Every roofing company needs several types of recurring meetings. You'll need sessions with key staff to discuss projects. You'll also need roofer marketing meetings to plan out advertising and outreach. You’ll need consultation times with clients and get-togethers with sales staff. It may be tedious, but you'll suffer from a lack of communication if you don't get key people together regularly.

But roofing company meetings can also hurt your business. If you're not careful, you'll end up worse off at the end of the session than you were at the beginning. Structuring your business meetings helps you avoid the risks.

The Risks of NOT Structuring Your Roofing Company Meetings

Below, we'll go into the top 4 risks you'll face if you DON’T properly structure your meetings. Keep reading today to learn more and make your group sessions more worthwhile!

Risk #1: Your Employees May Not Engage

If your employees aren't engaging in your meetings, you're not getting the most out of gathering everyone together.

Unstructured meetings often don't encourage engagement. Instead, you might have one person who comes in with a lot of information and takes up most of the time. You might also just dump information on your employees and not leave any room for input.

Some employers solve this problem by asking their employees about their work. Yet, if you don't consistently structure your meetings, your workers may not know what information to prepare. As such, they might feel put on the spot or misrepresent their work.

As such, your structured meetings should encourage your employees to engage. A degree of predictability is helpful as it allows members to prepare appropriately. A structured roofing company meeting will also leave enough time for each employee to speak and share their ideas for the organization's good.

If everyone gets the chance to engage, they're less likely to think the meetings are a waste of time.

Risk #2: You May Never Get to the Reason(s) for Meeting

Every worthwhile, structured meeting addresses a point or series of issues. 

Often, business leaders predetermine these points. For example, if the goal of a meeting is to go over the success of a marketing campaign, your marketing team should present their analytics. 

If you don't have a well-structured meeting, you may not get to all the points you need to address. Instead, you might get sidetracked on different details. Your business leaders may struggle to redirect the meeting and keep things on track. 

Having a set plan for your business meeting can help you get to the point more efficiently. Then, your employees can spend more time discussing the issues related to the core of each issue. If someone gets sidetracked, the meeting leaders will have a blueprint. They can use this to redirect the meeting.

As a result, your company meeting will solve more problems. You may also need to have fewer meetings to achieve better results.

Risk #3: Your Workers May Not Collaborate

Bad meetings may prevent people from collaborating effectively.

Your employees each have a unique set of skills, even if they work on the same team. As such, when they work together, you'll develop better products. You may also solve issues more creatively.

But, if your meetings don't follow a particular pattern, your employees might not get a chance to collaborate. Collaboration depends on each person having the opportunity to share what they're working on. Then, other people can use their skills to improve the project or point out potential pitfalls.

In many cases, meetings will help your employees identify who has the skills to help them with their projects. You might even use sessions to divide workers into small, productive teams. 

Risk #4: You Could Be Creating More Workplace Conflict

Unstructured meetings may also encourage employee conflict instead of collaboration. Sometimes, employees have contrasting opinions on how something should get handled. Remarks about the quality of someone's work might get taken personally. 

This reality can result in meetings that often become fraught with tension. When this happens, it's best to have a blueprint to which your meeting leaders can refer back. That way, they can diffuse the conflict by returning to the original point. Then, managers should follow up with each worker and see if they can repair the relationship outside the meeting.

Otherwise, the conflict will take up too much meeting time. It may also cause employee relationships to deteriorate and make people more hesitant to collaborate.

Risk #5: You Don't Begin or End on Time

Meetings are supposed to make you more productive. But, if you don't begin or end on time, they may end up costing you.

The faster your employees can get their projects done, the more money your roofing company will make. As such, meetings shouldn't take up so many hours that they detract a lot of time from your schedule.

Without a structured meeting, you may not begin or end on time. This trend leaves everyone with less time in the day to get things done. It also frustrates your employees and leaves them feeling like meetings are a waste of time.

How Modern Meeting Structures Help

Now that you know the pitfalls of an unstructured meeting, you need to know how to avoid them.

There are several types of meeting structures out there. One of the most effective is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). EOS helps all kinds of meetings in a company run in a smoother fashion. The general structure of an EOS meeting is as follows:

• Starting on time
• Sharing positive updates
• Reporting items to ensure they're on track
• Building a to-do list for the next seven days
• Solving key issues
• Concluding with a summary. 

You should also discuss whether any information needs to get shared with other employees who aren't in the meeting. In the end, ask those present to rate the effectiveness of your time together.

Want to Improve Your Roofing Company Marketing?

If you want to improve your roofing company revenue, you've come to the right place. 

Here at Rizen, we focus on helping home services companies grow their clientele with business growth strategies. We ensure your day-to-day operations run smoothly - including your meetings!

We recommend you start by reading our FREE guide to Roofing Marketing. Learn more about how we can help streamline your business’s productivity. What's next?

Contact us today to learn more!