What are Meeting Minutes? Definition, Method and Format

How to make good and correct meeting minutes must go through several stages that you must learn. Maybe at first making meeting minutes is quite difficult for beginners, but if you are used to making meeting minutes then making meeting minutes will be easy.

The following is the meaning and ways to make good and correct meeting minutes. To find out more deeply, consider the following explanations.

Meaning of Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes are a summary containing brief notes of the important points obtained from a meeting. According to the Big Indonesian Dictionary, these minutes are brief notes on the course of the meeting and matters discussed or decided in it.

In other words, meeting minutes are the official record of a meeting that contains who, what, and how, as well as what results were obtained from a meeting.

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Meeting minutes are also referred to as meeting notes in which everything that happens in the meeting is written in the minutes. This report is useful and needed to be evidence of the course of a meeting and to record any important matters that were conveyed at the meeting.

And usually these minutes contain information in the form of participants, date and time of the meeting, agendas covered, decisions made during the meeting, and follow-up to be carried out.

These meeting minutes are also often referred to as meeting minutes or meeting minutes.

How to Make Good and Correct Meeting Minutes

In making a good and correct meeting report, it can be done in several ways. The minutes of the meeting itself are not something that is done carelessly. But it has criteria that need to be met to make good and correct meeting minutes.

There are several ways to make good and correct meeting minutes as follows:

1. Prepare the Meeting Agenda

The meeting agenda is one of the important components of a meeting which is often used to assist the course of the meeting in order to find the required results.

Besides that, having a meeting agenda is useful for keeping participants focused and avoiding unproductive meetings that don’t even produce anything.

Therefore the existence of this meeting agenda is very necessary as a tool for dividing time or time management and also serves as an outline when writing meeting minutes.

But in reality in the field people often ignore meeting agendas. So that often makes meetings not have maximum results and makes these people have to hold meetings many times to find the results needed.

Therefore, before conducting meeting activities, it is necessary for you to prepare a meeting agenda that is tailored to the needs or objectives of holding the meeting. So by using a meeting agenda the desired goals or needs will be achieved quickly even through just one meeting.

2. Recording Attendance in Meeting Minutes

Record attendance is something important that must be recorded. As for recording attendance, it requires a list of participants who were present and absent.

This is used to find out who has agreed and who does not know and has not been approved what happened at the meeting. So that it can determine the results of the meeting and can determine whether the results are feasible or not.

The attendance record can be announced or shared after the meeting is over. In essence, all members of the meeting need to know who was present and who was not present so that all participants could express their respective opinions so as to create fair and maximum results.

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3. Following the Structure Based on the Activity Agenda

Compile meeting minutes according to the objectives and needs of the meeting Meeting agendas are prepared to organize and guide the course of the meeting so that it produces the desired and needed results.

Because the meeting itself will always be held until the expected goals can be achieved as a whole.

Therefore, in the meeting itself, it is necessary to follow the stages or practices according to the needs. Which goals and needs are neatly written in the minutes of the meeting.

By following a clear structure in the activity agenda, the meeting will run smoothly by producing meeting objectives that can be written into the meeting report itself.

There are so many advantages that can be obtained just by following the agenda of the meeting because the agenda has already been arranged and made in such a way that it contains the objectives of the meeting.

So that adjusting the agenda of this activity the meeting objectives can be achieved so that the meeting can be held only one time with the aim – All goals have been achieved.

Therefore, never ignore the meeting agenda. Because even though it looks trivial, the agenda is very important in the meeting itself.

Because by holding meetings in accordance with the agenda of activities that are made, the meeting objectives can be achieved and can produce satisfactory results which will be written in the minutes of the meeting.

4. Write Important Matters in Detailed Meeting Minutes

In the implementation of the meeting it is necessary to write down all the things that happened in the minutes of the meeting. Both from the recording of the attendance of participants who were present or who were not present.

Some opinions from each participant and their comments. Some of the decisions made and also the actions that will be taken in the future.

The things mentioned above are things that must be written down in the minutes of the meeting so that the results obtained from the meeting can be remembered and carried out properly by always controlling each member and all the results written in the minutes.

You are also free to write the report itself but still conditional. The meaning of freedom of writing may be written in detail or only in outline. Provided that when only writing an outline, the note taker or secretary or clerk can understand it and can explain it to others.

Writing everything that happens in the meeting into the minutes of the meeting is very important because the minutes of the meeting itself are the results obtained at the meeting. So the minutes of this meeting are very important in the implementation of the meeting itself. Therefore, writing the minutes of the meeting requires high concentration.

5. Ask Meeting Participants to Review the Minutes

This activity of re-reading the minutes of meetings produced by other participants is useful to find out how far people understand the rules that you have written. It is also useful to find out the deficiencies in the minutes of the meeting so that they can be corrected immediately at the meeting.

Having reviews from other people about the minutes that you made will also help to review the minutes of the meeting whether they are incomplete or other errors occur, which with this review, the mistakes that occur can be minimized.

So before the review from other meeting participants regarding the minutes of the meeting that you previously made is something very important and valuable. Because with this review, it can improve the minutes of meetings that were not perfect before.

So it can be concluded that reviewing the minutes that have been written has several advantages, such as being able to test how much people understand the minutes of meetings that you have written so that they will turn the minutes into meeting minutes that are easily understood by anyone.

In addition, the advantages gained from reviewing the minutes of the meeting that have been written are knowing the deficiencies contained in the minutes of the meeting as well as knowing what are the incompleteness in the novel so that improvements can be made as soon as possible and can make the joint agreement that has been produced more quickly to be implemented.

The activity of reprocessing the resulting meeting minutes can also improve the accuracy of the minutes and can make it easier for other people or other participants to provide their comments or opinions to complete and perfect the meeting rules that have been made to become a mutual agreement.

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Meeting Minutes Format

In making these minutes, you need a good and correct format, especially for official types of meetings. Such as meetings held at companies or other meetings related to business or  financial reports  which are official meetings that must use a good and correct and standard format of minutes.

The formats of minutes that must be written and must be adhered to in writing minutes are as follows:

1. Title of Minutes or Meeting

The format of the minutes that must be written first is the title of the meeting where the meeting was written at the beginning of the minutes and is useful for distinguishing one note from another, especially when the minutes are stacked together.

So with the title of the meeting, the minutes will be easy to distinguish and can be easily searched at any time when needed.

2. Place and Time of Implementation

The second thing that must be written in the minutes is the place and time of implementation which can serve as a reminder for the participants and as a barometer of the progress of the results obtained from the meeting.

3. Purpose of the Meeting

Well, the purpose of the meeting must be in accordance with the preparation of the agenda that was made beforehand. Don’t forget to include the purpose of the meeting in the minutes.

For example, in a meeting about  how to increase sales turnover  in the pandemic era, just write down the purpose of the meeting: how to increase the company’s product sales turnover in the pandemic era.

4. List of Meeting Members

Meeting members are also very important to be included in the meeting minutes. This is to find out which members were present or not at the meeting. Recording of members is important so that anyone who is absent does not attend the meeting, so that they can provide confirmation to the minutes.

If there are members who are permitted for some reason, they can notify the HR team via  mobile attendance  so they don’t cut salaries.

5. Discussion

Furthermore, there are discussion objectives that will bring the meeting in a certain direction with certainty. At the same time as a holder or controller so that meeting activities do not deviate far from their original purpose. So that these goals can be achieved precisely and in a short time, without the need to hold multiple meetings because one time is enough to achieve the desired goal.

The purpose of this discussion is to control the direction of the meeting in order to achieve the desired goals.

6. Results of Meeting Resolutions

After the discussion, the results of the meeting’s decisions can be known. The results of this decision also need to be written down at the meeting so that all members know what has been decided.

And the last thing is to hold the meeting, usually it is written who is the scribe of the novel as the person in charge and who controls the running of the minutes of the meeting. Usually after the meeting, the minutes team will provide information to other employees.