It’s 8.59am, and you’re powerwalking to the meeting room on the other side of the office building, cup of coffee in one hand and a notebook in the other. Did you forget anything? What is the meeting about anyway? You take the lift and arrive just in the nick of time, taking your usual seat around the large conference table, prepared to endure another long and probably draggy meeting that could have been an email.
Sounds familiar? If your meetings aren’t as fruitful as they should be, perhaps it’s time to think out of the box. We pick the brains of events expert and entrepreneur Joewin Tan, the CEO of Huone Singapore, an events hotel that rents out themed meeting and events rooms to corporates, about simple but effective ways to boost productivity at meetings.
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Huone (pronounced “hwo-ney“) means “room” in Finnish, and first started in Helsinki before Joewin brought it to Singapore shores in 2017. The sprawling space conveniently located in Clarke Quay boasts 10 unique and inspirational themed rooms and one “igloo”, a callback to the company’s Finnish roots. They’re a stark contrast to the typical templated board rooms, meeting rooms and convention centres in hotels and expos. At Huone, you can sit on swing chairs, lie on bean bags or feel like you’re in a Nordic cabin for a change.
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“A lot of meetings are done in a way that’s disorganised and unproductive, which means lots of man hours are wasted on bad meetings,” shares Joewin, who also started event agency Linear Dots Production in 2012.
Here, she shares five key ways to make your meetings way more productive: