Will No Meeting Wednesdays raise employee morale?

 

No Meeting Wednesdays - 6 Practical Steps

 

More companies are jumping on the trend of No Meeting Wednesdays after Facebook announced they’re giving it a spin.

The reason?

Well, I guess if you’re reading this you like the idea of a day that can be entirely focused on something.

That something will obviously depend on what your line of work is.

Launching a strategy like No Meeting Wednesday might not be the easiest thing to convince your managers to do though.

Here are 6 practical steps to launch a meeting-free day:

 

1. Start with your own agenda

This is so easy you can do it right after reading this.

Just go to your calendar and block the agenda for the next five Wednesdays. There! You did it. No meetings can be scheduled.

What will happen now? Will people respect it?

Well, to a large extent that depends on you.

You can either explain what you’re trying to do, which will help them understand that it’s not a biggie to schedule the meeting for a Tuesday for example.

Or lay low until you have it clear yourself it No Meeting Wednesdays is a good thing for your productivity.

Watch the reactions from others, take notes on reactions and see what happens!

You can then expand it to your team, and then who knows, take the new policy company-wide.

 

2. Meeting overload?

Sometimes No Meeting Wednesday is used as an attempt to combat a similar, but slightly different problem:

Meeting Overload.

The technique behind a day to focus is less about cutting down on meetings, which you can of course do, and more about concentrating them to the other days of the week.

Think you’re doing too many meetings?

Well, just revise that too. And of course make sure that all meetings are, well, great.

 

3. Sell the idea to others (before starting)

If you started with just blocking Wednesdays in your own agenda, you can use your experience for storytelling.

This is a good way to explain to colleagues and your team what you found helpful, and how No Meeting Wednesday is helping YOU to gain productivity and focus.

Some might prefer that you name-drop examples. Mention companies like Facebook or Asana. The latter has been using this strategy since 2013.

To increase buy-in, you can also get people to vote on if Wednesday is the best day to brand as a meeting free day.

Or hey, challenge them to come up with a fun name for the chosen day.

Use your All-Staff meeting to launch the initiative.

 

4. No exceptions

If you’re doing a company-wide No Meeting Wednesday, you’ll need to be strict.

No exceptions.

So ruthlessly push meetings to other days, in order to make sure that the No Meeting Wednesday policy is respected.

Don’t feel guilty!

That really important meeting can be done the day before or the day after. If you have to break the rule, make sure it’s really worth it. Or you’ll slip right back to scheduling meetings all over the place.

Lead by example.

 

5. Close the door

So the idea is to have a full day of focus and no interruptions, right?

If possible, try to distance yourself during No Meeting Wednesday.

Lucky enough to have a room with a door? Close it and put up a “No Meeting Wednesday” post-it.

It might not stop a reeeally important question from a colleague, but it should scare away random people just looking for a chat.

Also, activating that Out-Of-The-Office might help.

 

 

6. What’s the MOST important thing you can get done?

A day or a week can get by super fast. All of a sudden the weekend is over and you’re back to Million Meeting Monday.

What big thing is most important right now?

That’s where your focus should go during your meeting-free day.

Having a clear goal for the end of the day helps you keep a razor focus.

If possible, stay clear of catching up on emails or smaller things, which can easily be done in a couple of minutes. These can be done any other day of the week.

BIG projects, strategic planning, or reading that inspiring book are harder to squeeze in between meetings.

Think deep work.

This is also interesting from the perspective of No Meeting Weeks which Google is experimenting with.

 

Ready to implement No Meeting Wednesdays?

Happy employees are productive employees, right?

If you’re interested in tracking the impact of your No Meeting Wednesdays, you can use a system that shows the daily employee mood.

Then check if there’s a correlation.

Are your employees happier on Wednesdays?

Or, how is the mood on Wednesdays now, compared to pre-No Meeting Wednesdays?

Best of luck with improving your business!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hej! I’m Rebecca, co-founder at Celpax. We use simple tech tools to create better work environments. And build a better society while at it! Let’s talk about Employee health and Workplace Wellness programs on Twitter? Or follow us on Linkedin.