Dear Reader

Welcome to this week’s Labour Bulletin – hopefully it’s the prelude to a lovely, long weekend for you.

How would you rate your meeting etiquette?

Some of you will be lucky enough to be on leave on Monday, but there’ll also be a lot of people hard at work. You’ll inevitably have meetings set up and looking at my schedule got me thinking about meeting etiquette.

Susanne Biro wrote a very interesting article for www.hrfuture.net on how to be professional. It’s so true that the way you treat meetings is a huge part of how you’re perceived professionally.

Susanne points out that you must treat people with dignity and respect. We all expect it from others, and should act the same ourselves. In the workplace this extends to meetings as they essentially use other people’s time. I wouldn’t like someone to waste my time, and I’m pretty sure it drives you crazy too when people waste yours!

How professional are you?

Ask yourself these four questions from the article to see how much respect you show your colleagues and clients:

• When you are meeting with another, do you respond to emails and/or answer your phone?
• How frequently do you arrive late to a meeting and/or allow a meeting to run over the allotted time without re-negotiating this with the many others it will impact?
• How often do you cancel or reschedule meetings? And
• What tone of voice do you use when you answer your phone?

If your employees are guilty of any of these, you need to sort out the problem. Disrespect will cause problems in the workplace, and it will impact productivity if employees’ feel their time’s being wasted…even by their boss!

Until next time...

Sarah-Jane Bosch
Managing Editor
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