Using a meeting room during COVID
For most businesses, organising a meeting pre-COVID simply involved using the meeting room in the office. Then COVID came and we all got used to virtual meetings on Zoom or Teams. But however productive virtual meetings are, it’s not the same as meeting face to face, which is why we are seeing an increase in bookings for our meeting room.
Face to face meetings post lockdown are slowly beginning to happen, but with more people working remotely and not everyone being in the office on a regular basis, using the in house meeting room is not always the best solution or possible. Organising face to face meetings is now more of a challenge, especially if your in-house meeting room is too small for effective social distancing or your staff do not live near the office and do not want to use public transport.
Here at Hexagon, our meeting room is proving very popular during the COVID pandemic with businesses who have closed their own offices, have staff working locally or who only have a small meeting room.
The meeting room at Hexagon has a large meeting table that enables delegates to sit socially distanced. The room is also large, with plenty of circulation space, so keeping a safe distance is easy. It is also regularly cleaned between meetings and antibacterial hand sanitiser is available.
Apart from the new joy of actually meeting someone face to face, using an offsite meeting venue has a number of benefits.
1. Change of scene
You might have the most amazing office space, but just taking staff out of their familiar day-to-day surroundings makes for a better meeting environment. Staff may have a different attitude outside of the office to attending just ‘another meeting’ in the office.
2 Feeling special
Most firms use offsite venues for important meetings and staff know this, so if they are asked to attend an offsite meeting they know that it is an important one. This is reflected in them being more focussed, maybe dressing a bit smarter than they might for an office meeting and maybe approaching it in a more serious way.
3 Improve focus
If you’re in the office it’s easy for people to find you and interrupt with that important telephone call or a question that apparently just can’t wait. Yet strangely when you’re offsite they can wait until you finish the meeting. It also ensures that people don’t slope off early or head back to their desks to catch up on emails during breaks. Having meetings out of the office can mean less disturbance and interruptions.
Holding your meetings offsite may not always appear to be cost effective but they can be very effective as far as productivity is concerned, so it’s certainly worth considering for important meetings. Whether it is for a brainstorming session, a strategy meeting or just a key meeting, offsite meetings have lots of benefits.
If you’re looking for a COVID safe* meeting room for socially distanced meetings in Witney, Hexagon Business Centres has a fully equipped meeting room – we even provide free tea and coffee! Contact
*Note that we keep up to date with Government guidelines, which may change.
