What Are Board Meeting Notes and Why Do They Matter?

The board meeting notes are used to document the activities of the collegiate and advisory bodies. Quite often, minutes of meetings are kept at business meetings, negotiations to fix the agreements reached by the parties, or other conditions worked out jointly. The document reflects the activity of joint development and adoption of managerial decisions.

What Do Board Meeting Notes Constitute?

The minutes of the meeting are a kind of business document, reflecting the full range of events that occurred within the framework of the meeting of the company’s staff. This type of document is not included in the list of mandatory for maintaining the enterprise but often it can be quite useful.

Why Do You Need Meeting Minutes?

Business meetings provide an opportunity to resolve a large number of essential problems, respond to complex issues in time, formulate an enterprise development strategy, and all that jazz. At the same time, some board meetings are not subject to the recording by protocol, which is also the norm. The management team of the organization can independently establish a list of general events during which recording is officially kept, as well as designate those at which it is not necessary to do so.

The main purpose of the protocol is to record in writing the entire range of issues, tasks, and opinions that were voiced during the meeting, as well as jointly adopted decisions. Most often, such documentation is used within the framework of meetings that have a direct impact on the future of the organization. In addition, it is desirable to record the content of all meetings with third-party enterprises and employees of state institutions.

Meeting Minutes Rules

A well-established ideal protocol looks like this: the protocol is agreed upon, printed, and signed immediately after the meeting. Then, there is a distribution of responsibility. Employees receive the latest protocol and their assigned responsibilities in the corporate task management system by email. A custom template can be used to get the agreed protocol and assigned decisions. It consists of the following aspects:

    • organizational details;
    • a list of participants;
    • agenda;
    • decisions;
    • tasks;
    • issues for discussion;
    • participants’ signatures.

What Type of Minutes Is a Meeting Minutes?

In management activities, several types of protocols have become widespread: an agreement protocol, a protocol of intent, and a protocol for the seizure of material evidence (documents). The main documents of the general meeting of shareholders include the minutes of the counting commission and the minutes of the meeting. In addition, it is allowed to draw up a protocol by one official if he/she performs administrative functions. Certain standard templates have been developed for all types of these documents.

At present, it is customary to draw up minutes of the meeting to fix the course of collegial events held by leaders of different levels. This document is used to register events during various seminars, meetings, conferences, etc. The decision on the need to draw up the minutes of the meeting during operational activities rests with the manager who appoints and conducts these events. If you just need to transfer information to employees on a specific problem or explain decisions made before that, then you cannot use the protocol. If there is a need for this document, then it reflects the composition of participants, and put forward ideas or proposals.

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