Meeting and Email Guidelines

For a smarter communication, here are the Meeting & Email Guidelines from Smile Group Committee.

Dear all, 

Every day, we all receive dozens of emails and are invited / participate to a lot of meetings throughout the day. We often ask ourselves the following questions: 

• Why am I receiving this email? 

• Why am I invited to this meeting? 

• Why are there so many people looped in this email? 

• Why are there so many people invited to this meeting? 

• Why having sent a 2 page email instead of having a quick 1-1 discussion which should have been more efficient!

• I don’t need to be in all the "mail loops"!

• I shouldn’t have participated in this meeting,

• I can work in parallel of the meeting as I’m not necessary, 

• I spent all day in meetings that were not necessary and couldn’t manage this emergency…

• Is there anything expected of me? …

• And on the other hand, we sometimes think that we should have been informed, in the loop of emails to ensure appropriate decisions/information…

In addition, it has been estimated that a simple email emits 4 grams of CO2e and an email with an attachment emits 35 g of CO2e and having a meeting has direct and indirect cost for participants and for the company (energy, time spent, cost of meeting…). 

In this context we, as the Smile Group Committee, have worked on a few guidelines for meetings and email efficiency, which aim at making us, the Smile Group, more productive ! As you will see many of these rules are common sense rules but it is good sometimes to remind them and share good practices to be more efficient together. 

This rules are short & simple to become a part of corporate culture.

Please read these carefully and apply them to your daily exchanges.

Other steps on meetings & emails efficiency will be spread shortly. 

Cheers !

The Smile Group Co

Meeting efficiency

1. #emailvsmeetings -  If any meeting can be substituted with email/chat, it must be done

2. #prepareyourmeeting - If a meeting is inevitable it should be well prepared and short

• 15 min meeting is not embarrassing

• Invite as few participants as possible

• No agenda = no meeting

• Fewer items in agenda = better focus

• No decision/action = meeting wasted 

• No Minutes of the Meeting (MoM) sent = meeting wasted

• No action execution control = meeting wasted

• For business review meetings and decisions making meetings, the organizer should write down a 1 to 3 pages note explaining the problem, introducing suggested solution, highlighting pros and cons and impacts

3. #havelessmeetings - A calendar full of meetings cannot be efficient

Email efficiency

A. General email guidelines

1. #ownership - Be clear about who you are expecting an answer from and/or who you are expecting an action to be performed (and if email is for decision or for information only). If it is not clear and you are on the receiving end of an email, then ask (by chat or call if possible to limit email exchanges with all persons) to the person who sent it to whom the email is directed. 

2. #emailsvschat - Chats should be privileged /used for instant exchanges which do not need documentation. 

3. #cc - In copy (cc'd) are the persons you want informed or have to be informed about your email topic but who do not need to provide an answer. 

4. #timetoanswer - When you are addressed with a question or an action in an email, answers should be provided in the time given by the author or if not within a 24 hours timeline from the date of the mail. If you need more time to do an action or to give an appropriate answer within the email, then you should reply by specifying that you have taken into account and when you will get back to the email sender with the action done or full answer. 

5. #readyourmail - Emails should be read - whether you are in copy or whether you are a receiver. 

6. #efficiency - Be concise and straight to the point as much as possible. 

B. Email sender & receiver responsibilities 

Sender's responsibility

1. Mention in your email title if this is FYI or action needed

2. If action is needed, don't send the email to more than 1 person unless you identify several owners in your email. You can add more people in cc but if they are in cc, it's agreed that by default it's FYI for them and no action is needed from their side

3. When in CC the receiver has the right not to read the email, and to disagree afterwards with the sender position: i.e. it's not because the sender sent an email to someone in cc who did not answer as no action needed that it means that the the receiver in CC agrees with the position of the sender

Receiver’s responsibility

1. If the sender did not properly identify the right owner for your email, please re-adress to the correct owner by forwarding the email + adding the sender in CC to help the sender solve his problem.

2. Indicate systematically a clear and transparent timeline back to the owner. If for some reason, you can't meet the deadline, please share proactively with the sender instead of being chased back by the sender