Remote

Meeting Templates

The ultimate pack of customer success meeting agenda templates

Remote
Remote Project Check-In Meeting
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Our Objective

Our Objective

Reiterate the objective of the project

Deadlines/Milestones

Include in the agenda high-level milestones

Project Update Roundtable

  • Name
  • Summarize 1-5 updates here in the agenda
  • Name
  • Summarize 1-5 updates here in the agenda

Roadblocks & Risks

  • Where are you blocked? How can the team help?

Next Steps

  • @name Task by DUE-DATE
Remote
Agile
Remote Stand-Up Meeting
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Name

Name

  • What did you do yesterday?
  • What will you do today?
  • Where are you blocked?
  • Comfort Level — How close are we to hitting our goals?

Name

  • What did you do yesterday?
  • What will you do today?
  • Where are you blocked?
  • Comfort Level — How close are we to hitting our goals?
One-on-one
Remote
One-on-One: Remote Employee 1:1
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Warm up

Warm up

Start with a light, open-ended question. What’s been keeping you busy?

Highlight Achievements

What milestones have we hit since our last check-in? Note progress on important initiatives and emphasize takeaways.

Problem Solving

What’s stopping you from being more productive? How can management help you be more productive? 

Plan to remove specific inefficiencies or roadblocks. Create action items.

Two-Way Evaluation and Feedback

What are we doing well? What can we do better? Discuss ways to create value for manager, employee, and the organization.

Open Discussion

Provide space for open discussion. What’s got you excited? Worried? Annoyed?

Follow-Up

When is our next one-on-one check-in? Summarize any action items arising from the one-on-one.

Action items:


Team
Featured
Remote
Contributed
Remote All Hands Meeting
Template by
Trello
Brian Cervino
Product Marketing Senior Team Lead
at
Trello
Brian Cervino
Location

Location

For Town Halls, access the meeting via a video chat. This is a powerful way of creating a shared experience across the entire company, wherever they are. 

Department Updates

Town Halls are a great way to hear about what different teams and departments are working on by setting up demos, or sharing statistics with the entire company. In the absence of in person communication day today, it’s easy to run into the trap of different teams feeling siloed and out of the loop. It is also a good time for management and executives to reiterate the bigger picture in terms of company priorities.

Solidifying Company Culture

The first card read aloud is called Town Hall Announcements. The 10 items in the checklist on this card are akin to the “10 commandments” for the company. These state the core philosophies of the company and the company culture.  At the beginning of each Town Hall, someone reads these 10 principles out loud so that they are reiterated to the entire company. We always have a new hire read the list so that they become familiar with these philosophies. 

An Open Platform For The People

The goal of a Town Hall is to have a transparent company wide meeting with an open forum for any employee to be able to ask questions, voice concerns, celebrate great contributions, or update the company on their work.

Anyone can add a card to Announcements/Questions with the goal of addressing every single card on the list during the town hall. If you add a card to the list, add yourself to the card so that the meeting moderator can call on you when your card comes up.

Celebrate Successes

Town Hall meetings are not all business. The meetings are a rare opportunity when the entire team is together, which is especially novel in distributed companies. Take the time to build your employees up by establishing fun traditions and finding different ways to celebrate successes.

Easy Access Meeting Minutes

Of course, once a town hall is done this doesn’t mean it should be forgotten. Meeting Minutes from the Town Hall should be easily accessed by all employees after the meeting is over.

Remote
Team
Remote Team Meeting
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Purpose

Purpose

Review top-level metrics, coordinate projects, and discuss pressing topics.

--

Agenda

Celebrate wins

Data to review

Updates Roundtable

  1. Name
  2. Name
  3. Name

Discussion Topics

--

Action Items


Remote
Team
Remote Weekly Meeting
Template by
Hugo
at
Hugo
Team Review

Team Review

Share updates on overall progress, key metrics, and anecdotes to give your team an up-to-date understanding of current initiatives.

Individual Updates

Allow each team member to briefly share what they've been working on. This includes progress, obstacles, achievements, and any other information that would be valuable for the team.

Positive Highlights

Acknowledge big wins and milestones accomplished since the last weekly meeting. What valuable lessons were learned?

Roadblocks & Concerns

Have any issues or challenges come up since the last weekly meeting? Are there any particular problems a team member is stuck on? How can we help solve them?

New Information

Are there any new metrics, trends, customer feedback, or market influences we should be aware of? What about company announcements or industry news? Share any resources that would help the team understand these concepts better.

Other Important Notes

Summarize any other valuable information that was shared. It does not have to be directly related to the weekly meeting agenda.

Upcoming Priorities

What are the main priorities we should focus on for next week? How are we planning to approach these? What does success look like?

Main Takeaways

What were the main insights from this weekly meeting? Include key decisions made, progress reports, and any opportunities, issues, or concerns that should be shared with colleagues.

Share

List all key stakeholders not present and other departments that this information should be shared with.

Take Action

Clarify next steps for the entire team as well as each individual. Note who's completing them, and when they should be done by. You can assign these tasks from this template.

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Free virtual meeting templates to use, copy, and download.

Whether you’re working remotely by choice or by necessity, it’s imperative to have effective meetings with your team.

Keep your remote meetings high energy, on topic, and on the shorter side, and your coworkers will be much happier when it’s time to log into Zoom or get on the conference call.

That’s where agenda templates come in. By having the right remote meeting template for every meeting, you can turn aimless virtual sessions into compelling and effective meetings.

The template sets the norms for every meeting. If you want to have better remote meetings, use a template that encourages best practices, and you’ll be well on your way.

On this page, we have many free agenda templates for all the most common types of virtual meetings.

All of the sample remote meeting agendas on this page are available to use in a variety of ways:

  • Download remote meeting templates as Word Docs
  • Copy remote meeting templates as Google Docs
  • Use remote meeting templates in Hugo (meeting notes app)

👉👉👉 QUICK NOTE: To preview all the templates, scroll down past this article.

But how do you put these remote meeting templates to their best use?

How do you ensure that your meeting is a success without being there in-person?

Below are some tips and insights for having successful remote meetings with these templates.

What constitutes a remote meeting?

While the COVID-19 pandemic made fully-remote meetings more common, remote meetings have been essentially around since the telephone’s invention. 

Teams today hold remote meetings more and more often over video conferencing (e.g., Google Meet or Zoom). They may involve other meeting software such as some kind of shared meeting notes (e.g., Hugo), a virtual whiteboard (e.g., Miro), or some combination of all these tools together (e.g., Teamflow).

Everyone doesn’t need to be in a separate location for a meeting to count as a remote meeting. Some team members will be in the same physical place, and others will “call in.” It’s not uncommon to have two offices call each other for a remote meeting that connects two teams who are each together in their own conference room.

What are the main challenges of holding a remote meeting?

Here are some common issues with virtual meetings. Some, but not all, can be helped by creating an agenda based on a remote meeting template.

Remote meetings attendees struggle with focus.

Remote meetings are often critiqued as lacking the same energy and creativity as an in-person meeting. Especially when the video isn’t being used, it’s easier for attendees to tune out, check email, and surf social media without being noticed.

Remote meetings are impersonal.

Remote meetings also tend to miss out on “water cooler” chatter that naturally occurs in an office. This reduces knowledge transfer between team members and makes bonding and team building more challenging. For fully-remote companies, it’s hard for people to get to know each other.

Of course, some of these challenges are offset by benefits from being remote. No time is wasted traveling to and from the meeting venue. And, not counting intrusions by pets and children, workplace interrupts can be more drastic when people can see and hear everything in the room.

Changes to make when holding a meeting remotely vs. in-person

If you’re more comfortable meeting in person, connecting virtually with other people may seem jarring. Everyone’s head is crammed into a little square on your screen. Lighting and camera angles are unflattering. And with the slight lag, it’s hard not to talk over each other.

Put an open-ended section in your agenda template.

With one-on-one meetings and even team meetings, it’s nice to leave an opportunity for just a little bit of banter. We like to do this by having a section to “celebrate wins” in every team meeting. Anyone can celebrate anything they want, big and small. It’s an opportunity to share what’s going on in the virtual office without feeling forced.

Share your remote meeting agenda with everyone who is attending. 

Having a clear agenda can help keep everyone on track (even distracted team members). But better yet, if you ask everyone to contribute to the agenda before the meeting — say by filling in some bullet points for their updates — you get them more invested. When it comes time to have your virtual meeting, they’ll be following along more closely.

For better remote meetings, prioritize audio quality.

Nothing slows down the momentum of a virtual meeting or conference call, like not being able to hear each other. Even slight delays while people repeat themselves can leave a cloud over the whole meeting. Video is helpful, but the audio is critical, so spend some time figuring it out.

Checklist: Actions to take to improve audio quality during a remote meeting

  • Wear headphones to eliminate echo (and distractions)
  • Mute yourself when not talking if you’re in a noisy environment
  • Close unnecessary apps and browser tabs to free up computer resources
  • Use an external microphone

For conference rooms, one tool we use a lot is MeetingOwl. MeetingOwl is a 360-degree camera and microphone that allows everyone in a room to gather around the table while giving remote participants the experience of being there in-person.

If you’re still struggling with audio, you may need to try a different video conferencing provider. For example, I’ve found that Zoom seems to process out a lot of background noise in real-time and tends to sound better than alternatives. (Keep this in mind when people are working from home under slower internet speeds.)

Remember, the ability of anyone to impact a meeting is dependent on their ability to communicate. Clear audio is required for clear communication.

What to do about unflattering camera angles during remote meetings

Once you’ve got your agenda in place using one of these templates and your audio sorted out using the above tips, you’ve still got one more area to tackle: the video.

Most of us aren’t used to being on camera so much. For virtual meetings, this creates additional stress and anxiety. Do I really look like that? Do I appear as professional, authoritative, and capable on the screen as I do in real life?

Move your camera further away and higher up.

If you’re using a laptop, try propping it up on some books or a stand during your remote meeting. A higher angle will allow the camera’s wide-angle lens to enlarge your eyes and face, not the bottom part of your chin. Moving the camera further away can also reduce some of the distortions.

Add a light source.

Interior lighting is often not very bright or positioned nicely. Something as simple as adding a lamp to your computer table at home can make a huge difference in how vibrant you look on screen. Whereas the light in your ceiling leaves shadows under your eyes, a light on the same level as your face will help eliminate under-eye shadows. Position it more in front than on the side to also fill in wrinkles.

Hide your image from yourself.

Many video conferencing tools allow you to hide yourself from the feed, helping when feeling self-conscious.

Here are the instructions for how to hide yourself in Zoom:

  1. Right-click your video to display the menu
  2. Choose Hide Myself 
  3. You will no longer see the video of yourself, even though everyone else in the meeting can still see you

Phone Users: If you’re on a conference call, the remote meeting agenda template is even more critical

There are many types of virtual meetings (i.e., those on video conferencing, via the telephone, or a one-to-one phone call), but one of the most common is still the conference call.

With a conference call, participants dial into a group line, usually from meeting rooms in various offices (and sometimes home offices). There is no video component to this type of remote meeting.

Without a clear visual to maintain the group’s attention, a remote meeting agenda template becomes indispensable. You can verbally direct everyone to each agenda item.

Turn your virtual meeting agenda into meeting notes

You’ve read this article. You’re prepared to run a fantastic remote meeting!

Still, there’s one more thing to do. Turn your meeting agenda into a set of meeting notes. This is easy. As the meeting takes place, add in some minor bullet points of meaningful discussions, decisions, and next steps.

Check out this article for a guide to writing meeting notes that people will actually use.

Remote meeting template takeaways

Always prepare an agenda. Keep your meetings short, sweet, and on topic.

Use your remote meeting agenda template to set expectations before the meeting.

Write down all action items from your meeting in your meeting notes.

Run efficient meetings, come to a decision, and get back to work
Have productive meetings your team can be proud of with a clear meeting agenda for every event in your calendar.
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