Module 2a — Office
Correspondence
and Records
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Section 3: Meeting records
ILO employees, like employees of most organizations, attend many meetings. At the ILO dialogue is a foundational activity for setting the agenda for future action. It is extremely important, therefore, that the essence of these meetings be captured accurately and transmitted to a readable format.
The human and financial costs of holding meetings are very high and effort is often wasted. To gain an idea of their financial cost, just calculate the per-hour salary of each participant at your next meeting. Next consider the costs involved with translating a record into several other languages. Yet, people can come away from meetings wondering what has been achieved during the meeting and frustrated about the time they have spent there. Often they are also unsure about what should happen next and if they must take any action.
This section focuses on one way of making meetings more productive producing effective records that focus on the decisions made - and the follow-up actions required.
For most departmental and team meetings at the ILO, detailed minutes are usually not required. Rather than traditional detailed minutes, the trend is for meeting summaries that focus on decisions taken and follow-up action required.
At the other extreme, however, are the minutes or, rather the reports, of major meetings such as sectoral meetings to discuss background papers on a particular subject. These are highly specialized, complex and formal documents. This section will focus on the fundamental skills required to become an effective writer of minutes and those reports that serve as a record of an event or meeting.