Situation: A company has many meetings. Organizers calendar meetings on Salesforce.com. Despite this, participants show up late, and sometimes not at all. When the right people aren’t present they must re-schedule the meetings. This ends up wasting valuable time for managers. How do you enforce meeting attendance?

Advice from the CEOs:

• The answer depends upon your company culture and priorities.
• If you have a production-focused culture, absence and tardiness may not be tolerable. Companies with this type of culture can take the following steps:
  • Call out late arrivals and absences immediately – the first time take them aside and explain that tardiness or absence is not excusable.
  • Called out repeat offenders on the spot!
  • One company has a policy that if you arrive late you stand for the period that you’re late. This has been very effective.
  • The example that you set reinforces desired behavior for the others.
• In client-centered service organizations the rules may be different. Some companies feel that customer calls and meeting customers’ needs comes first, even if it means that the meeting starts without a key participant.
• Match your meeting discipline to your culture.
• The quality of meeting is dependent on quality of the meeting facilitator. Make sure that you have the right people leading the meetings to keep them on time and on topic. This may improve meeting timeliness.
• If this is a challenge for your company, meet with those involved. Clarify the problem and confirm the reality of problem; then agree on the solution and gain their commitment to comply.

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