scheduled meetings

mushroomHR

Could anyone tell me their secret for getting employees to meetings on time. I had to schedule individual meetings for insurance open enrollment for 40 employees. The meetings were scheduled every 15 minutes and I have been doing nothing but calling and paging people all day to get the people to their meeting. Does anyone else ever have this problem and if so, can you recommend a way to get people to be on time? Thanks.

marc

Memo

To: All employees
From: The Big Kahuna

Subject: Benefit Meetings

Any and all EEs who are more than two minutes late for said meetings will be assigned Refregerator clean up. One week for each minute late.

POPEYE

The first thing I would do is discontinue the 1 on 1 meetings and have 1 open enrollment meeting to answer questions. As your company grows, you will not have time to babysit each EE when it is time to fill out paperwork. Maybe that occasional special situation but....Been there, done that, and have the gray hair to prove it.

System

I've had the same problem every year. This year I sent an email and a memo to each department head and provided them with open enrollment materials. The memo stated that the open enrollment meetings were mandatory. Any employees who did not attend or who were late could see the department head for answers to questions and for forms. It was hard but I had to stick to it. Several times the department head said "I'll send them to you if they have questions." You have to stand up to that and say "no, I don't have time. Just make sure your staff is there and on time."

mushroomHR

Thanks for the suggestions. Next year I will provide the material and tell anyone interested to see me for a one-on-one meeting. If they aren't interested in the benefit they can just sign the waiver and return it. I have enough grey hair and don't need anymore.

atrimble

I like Marc's suggestion!

We used to have mass retirement orientation meetings followed by opportunities for one-on-one questions with the retirement guy for existing participants. HR would sign us up for 15-minute appointments, and if we were so much as two minutes late, we got reassigned to the next available slot, and had to sit in the hall (like outside the principal's office) until the person who'd been bumped into our slot got finished. If the bumped up person got finished early, then the retirement guy took a break while waiting for the tardee's new appointment time. I guess the bosses either snapped the whip hard enough or employees actually liked doing their jobs enough to be anxious to return to their duties, so this enforced-delay seemed effective.

When I got this job, I eliminated that one-on-one scheduling entirely. Come talk to me *any* time, not just on March 31st or September 30th...

TN HR

Yes, it's called effective leadership. You bring the Managers in and communicate the meeting. Anyone who is late or absent will suffer disciplinary action. They, in turn, will hold the supervisors accountable, who in turn hold the leads who in turn hold the ee's. See how it works?