How To Write Effective Meeting Minutes (With Examples)

Information that’s been discussed at a company meeting can easily get lost in translation if it’s not recorded properly. To avoid misunderstandings, many businesses employ meeting minutes to organize information.

Meeting minutes assure that important details throughout a business meeting are kept track of for later use. These written documents are saved for reference in the future or to convey information to employees who weren’t present at the meeting.

Why Are Meeting Minutes Important?

Businesses that run smoothly and profitably are always concerned with their effectiveness. Meetings are regarded as the time for communication in a company to take place. If the information that’s handled during meetings becomes skewed, it’s a huge waste of time and effort.

Writing meeting minutes increases efficiency by establishing an accurate record of what transpired. It removes the room for error that comes with not keeping documentation. Monitoring meetings with a structured approach to the discussions, and actions that follow, leads towards success.

What to Include in Meeting Minutes

The point of writing meeting minutes is to have a record of all the important things that happened. They should be detailed enough that a co-worker who wasn’t in attendance would still understand them fully.

Certain information must therefore be included to make your meeting minutes documentation comprehensive enough so that it’s useful to anyone in the future.

The following are information that needs to be included when writing effective meeting minutes:

• The purpose of the meeting

• The full names of everyone in attendance

• The date and time the meeting happened

• Details about projects, who they were assigned to, and when they are due by

• Final calls that were made on decisions during the meeting

• Any updates to the prior meeting

• Details about when the next meeting will take place when it’s relevant

How to Write Meeting Minutes

Writing meeting minutes is a simple process, but it’s still important to be detail-oriented and complete it carefully. Consider the steps below for creating meeting minutes that successfully convey the crucial points that need documentation:

1. Prepare beforehand. The best way to take flawless meeting minutes is by being prepared accordingly before ever walking into the meeting. Many professionals choose to arrange a template that guides them towards the information they need to collect during the meeting.

   Understanding what data you need to collect beforehand makes it much easier to distinguish when the meeting is actually happening. To help with preparations, ask your supervisors what the general objective of the meeting will be and gather knowledge about the event.

   Strong preparation work makes taking meeting minutes notes during the actual meeting more of just filling in the blanks. At the very least, have a firm understanding of the meeting’s purpose.

2. Take detailed notes during the meeting. Once you’re at the meeting, the main focus is paying attention and taking clear notes.

   Be sure to take down the full names of everybody in attendance and the date of the meeting before anything begins. Arrive early to ensure this doesn’t eat away at discussion time.

   Asking these questions can be a bit awkward after a meeting, so pass around an attendance sheet at the beginning of the meeting to forgo asking for each individual’s information later.

   As the conversation begins and the topics that need to be handled arise, write down brief but direct notes about the main points that are brought up.

   Even though the term refers to every minute of a meeting, that doesn’t mean you need to take down every last little detail. Only include the most pertinent information that reflects what decisions, motions, or projects were handled.

   Mention who is responsible for particular tasks that have been delegated at a meeting in these notes. Try to separate your own opinions when recording for meeting minutes because it needs to be an objective account of what happened.

3. Retrieve copies of all reports used at the meeting. Documents, reports, and presentations are often given during a meeting to provide more clarification for its participants. Before leaving a meeting, ask a coordinator to forward these materials to you to bring this clarity to your meeting minutes.

4. Type up the notes neatly after the meeting. After the meeting has concluded, you should have a halfway put together handwritten series of notes.

   With the information that was discussed freshly in mind, bring your notes, and type them up in a more organized fashion.

   Having a digital copy of your meeting minutes allows for easier edits. It also gives you the ability to share it with your supervisors and co-workers with the click of a button.

5. Review and send to supervisors for approval. With a proofread final copy of the meeting minutes in hand, send it off to your supervisor for approval.

   Do thorough editing before emailing your meeting minutes to your manager. Once they’ve provided you with their seal of approval, the meeting minutes are finalized to be sent out to colleagues.

   Include both attendees of the meeting and co-workers who may have been absent and need to catch up on the details.

Tips for Writing Meeting Minutes

1. Handle meeting minutes promptly. Getting meeting minutes done quickly after the meeting’s conclusion is important for a few reasons. Firstly, the decisions that have been made just happened, so it’s unlikely that you’ve forgotten any details.

   Secondly, the information needs to be sent out to other employees promptly, especially if they’ve missed the meeting and require the details they missed.

2. Do not include random conversation. Although meetings are supposed to be targeted towards a particular focus, it’s natural for side conversations to take place occasionally.

   However, these don’t need to be included in meeting minutes. It distracts from more important information and brings in a conversation unrelated to the meeting’s purpose.

   If a conversation isn’t directly relevant to the topic of the meeting or decisions being made, leave it out of meeting minutes.

3. Include who was given tasks. Oftentimes, the purpose of meetings is to go over a new project or plan of action that the team is going to embark on. When this is the meeting objective, supervisors will spend a chunk of time delegating tasks to specific employees.

   It’s important to include who was designated with each task or responsibility during the meeting because it avoids encountering discrepancies later.

4. Look at meeting minutes templates. One avenue for making sure your meeting minutes are formatted correctly is to look at templates online. General meeting minutes templates give a good idea about how yours should look when you’re finished and ready to send it to a supervisor for approval.

   Use templates for preparation when creating your own outline to bring into a meeting.

5. Steer clear of recording opinions. When taking down meeting minutes notes, stick to strictly the facts. While opinions may be thrown around during a meeting, that’s not the crucial information that needs to be covered in your notes.

   Opinions may lead up to an ultimate decision, but only that final call should be included in meeting minutes.

6. Focus on listening in addition to taking notes. Even though taking meeting minutes means scribbling down notes at every chance, it’s still recommended to keep your ears open and listening too.

   There’s a pressure that comes with handling meeting minutes to keep writing every detail, but this strategy might have an undesirable result.

   It’s best to split up note-taking into a healthy balance on jotting important things down and listening intently without being distracted by writing.

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.