Affecting Behavior Change, LLC

When meetings run late, it compromises the rest of the day for the entire department and even the company.  How many times have you been in meetings that run hours over and have to rearrange or reschedule the remainder of your calendar?

Fienup et al., 2013 "implemented a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) at a human services organization to reduce the tardiness of scheduled staff meetings. Following baseline, FBA focused on antecedent and consequence conditions that affected staff arriving on time to scheduled meetings. These data were subsequently presented at a staff meeting in which staff planned an intervention to improve the timeliness of meetings. The intervention, composed of premeeting reminders, positive reinforcement for arriving on time, and meeting termination criteria (to facilitate meeting-to-meeting transitions), was implemented in a multiple baseline design across 3 types of meetings. As a result of the intervention, the number of minutes late that meetings started decreased."

Premeeting reminders consisted of: meeting leaders sending an "e-mail 24 hours before a meeting to remind staff about when and where the meeting would take place. The meeting leaders also typed or wrote an agenda for the meeting to ensure that meetings stayed within the appropriate time block. A 50-min hour policy was enacted whereby any meeting scheduled for an hour was to end 10 min before the end of the hour to allow for transition time between meetings. To better monitor meeting time, it was suggested that clocks be placed in each conference room." 

Positive reinforcement for arriving on time included coupons for arriving on time. "Coupons, with the staff person’s name, were placed in a jar, and each month two coupons were drawn at thedivision-wide staff meeting. The staff winners exchanged their coupons for a $25 gift card. This incentive system stemmed from informal discussions among staff and not a standardized reinforcer assessment."

Would these interventions increase your staff attending meetings timely?  Leave a comment below to let us know what worked for your business.

To read the article, click here.

To get more information about consulting services to increase staff timeliness, click here.