5 Steps to Simplify Writing Meeting Minutes

Despite changing business practices, minute writing remains a vital part of the daily business activities.

You may need to capture details of meetings for the benefit of absent staff or for future reference.

However, depending on the pace and complexity of a meeting, you may find it challenging to capture essential points and still keep pace with the information being presented.

Given how important minutes are, what can you do to ensure you capture all the vital information?

Here are five effective ways of simplifying the minute writing process:

5 Steps to Simplify Writing Meeting Minutes

1. Prepare for the Meeting

Never go to a meeting unprepared regardless of how many times you have attended meetings before.

Every meeting session is different with new agendas and fresh discussions. 

Find out the details of the meeting before it begins. Also, note down the participants and the purpose of the meeting. When you have this information, your job will be a lot easier.

2. Come Up with a Template

Writing meeting minutes demands attention and focus on various ideas being thrown around. You have to filter the information and record only what is relevant.

Therefore, you don’t have time to structure and tidy up your content. The information you record will be mixed up unless you have a reliable template to guide you.

Using a meeting minutes template will significantly simplify your job. There are tons of minute templates available online that you can customize to fit your needs.

3. Choose a Suitable Recording Method

Meeting minutes do not have to be recorded with a pen and paper. To make your work easier, why not record the minutes using a digital notepad?

There are many digital notepads in the market with various functionalities. 

You can also use audio recording devices to capture the meeting and later get the files transcribed by a company that offers meeting Transcription services. 

4. Follow the Basics of Minute Writing 

There are basic guidelines for writing meeting minutes that will make your work easier. Some of the guidelines include:

• If relevant, use graphics and images to highlight important points and limit text usage
• Capture covered issues but not meeting discussions
• When noting down meeting decisions, trace the circumstances that led to them
• Use lists and bullet points for conciseness
• Spell out abbreviations and acronyms if they are appearing in the text for the first time.

5. Use Simplified Codes

When writing meeting minutes, there is no point in spelling every word correctly because it’s challenging to do so when discussions are going on.

People speak faster than you can write. So to simplify your work, use a coding system.

We use codes all the time when texting friends and messaging each other on social media.

Here are some examples of simple codes that you can use to save time: government/govt, as soon as possible/asap, organization/org, etc.

Writing meeting minutes is an important formal activity for businesses, so using simplified words to capture details should not compromise the information.

Typically after the meeting, you will need to prepare a better transcript with the help of a business transcription service provider that does meeting transcription for filling purposes. T

hus, follow the above tips to make writing meeting minutes a breeze.

Also Read: 6 Tips to Write Content in a Time-Efficient Way