Timetabling meetings

[raindance]

Are you responsible for scheduling your company's calendar of meetings?  If so, how do you go about it?

[Brighton Rock]

I schedule our main calendar of meetings for our Boards of Directors of both our parent company and charitable foundation, plus the spin-off Committees that report to those Boards.

How do I go about it?  It's a dark art. 

We go from AGM to AGM so I have to schedule from around the end of the first quarter of each year, which is just after our accounts have been finalised.  There are a certain number of meetings required each year and in each quarter so I have, as an aide memoire, a table showing the rotations of meetings.  There are school and public holidays to avoid and a few weeks of the year are impossible for meetings.   School holidays are a challenge as some of our Board members come from parts of the United Kingdom where the school year is different to England.  Once all those dates are blocked out then I can plan the dates for the rotations.  Some meetings take place in a particular order, so that is an added pressure.  It also depends on who is the Chairman of the main Board as to what days I can schedule Board meetings. 

Meeting room availability is the next thing, but that is the responsibility of the person who does all our room bookings.   Her either finds rooms in our own building or elsewhere as needed.

Dark art it is, but I generally get there in the end without cluttering up other people's work schedules too much.

[gee4]

This is not part of my current job but I have done it previously Rain.

Usually once board meeting dates are in place everything else filters in eg. monthly management meetings, quarterly reviews and so on.  We have input deadlines for all meetings and its the assistants' job to set reminders and ensure all inputs are collated submitted on time.

Also, not sure if others will agree, but the same dates are usually set each year for things like AGM, board meetings, management meetings.  Rooms are usually booked once the dates are known, and in my current company, the boardroom and maybe one or two other main conference rooms are blocked out for the whole year.  On occasions our management meetings may be arranged off site.

[raindance]

Thank you, both.

A dark art indeed, Bright, and almost as tricky as table planning.