In hospitality and in the casino business, every second counts. When the work is fast paced and your team are rota’d, you want to be sure you're not wasting any time. In this article, we look at how you can make the most out of the short time allotted for pre-shift briefings and team meetings.

Team meetings and pre-shift briefings are integral to keeping a handle on your organisation and making sure everybody is clear about what’s expected of them. Trouble is, if you spend too much (or too little) time on one point, a whole shift can be thrown into difficulty as people get behind before they have even started. Either that, or they don’t truly understand their expectations.

One of the main reasons employees can get despondent about meetings is when they don’t have a clear purpose or goal. Having a briefing just because you should never helped anybody. In fact, they can often have a negative effect as people feel the need to come up with something to talk about just for the sake of it.

Here are some ways you could start to utilise your time better.

Always be specific about purpose

Any meeting or briefing should have a primary and secondary purposes. The primary can change but the secondary always remains the same. This is simply re-connecting your employees with their work, with the organisation as a whole, and giving them a reason to want to perform at their best.

When it comes to the primary purpose, be sure that this is articulated to anybody involved in advance. It isn’t enough to say “We have a meeting before each evening shift at [x]”. It’s much better to say “Before each evening shift we go through roles and responsibilities so that everybody is on the same track and can communicate what they need from everybody else to succeed at whatever they are doing.”

Always be specific about time

When it comes to pre-shift briefings, time is money. When you specify the purpose, be sure to be specific about time too. When team members know this, they have a better handle on just how much information they should bring with them. For five-minute stand-up meetings, they know they only need to know what their role is. For longer, more in-depth team meetings, they know they’ll be expected to be more articulate - so give them more notice.

Always take control and establish expectations

Finally, when it comes to the meeting itself, it’s up to you to command control from the get-go and make sure that you don’t overrun. For pre-shift briefings, establish those expectations clearly and simply. Firstly, tell them what you’re going to tell them (E.g. I will assign roles/responsibilities). Then tell them (E.g. These are those responsibilities.) Let them respond to what you told them (E.g. “What do you need from everybody else for you to do your best in your role, if anything?”). Finally, summarise what you told them and finish the briefing.

A note on looking backward

Looking backward, for example mentioning issues in previous shifts, before starting your pre-shift briefing should be avoided. Any issues like these should be brought away from this precious time and articulated in advance. This way the individuals involved will already know what is expected of them. They will also appreciate not being made to feel inadequate before they start their role, better re-connecting them with the company/team as a whole.