Weekly workshops: Sync up with your team efficiently while saving time

The challenge: manage regular team workshops, easily

Weekly team meetings can be challenging – finding a time that works for everyone, getting people on board and engaged, sticking to schedule and getting through that to-do list. Working remotely just makes it harder, right? Especially if you’re looking for really productive team meetings.

Well, it doesn’t have to! Suzanne Frawley, Director of Talent Management in an oil and gas company, leads her team meetings every Monday morning using Klaxoon’s Weekly template. In 45 minutes, her team of 7 shares their accomplishments, their focus for the week, and the difficulties they encountered.

As the world’s only workshop platform that helps organizations shift to a workshop mindset, it’s no surprise to us that workshops can be a super-efficient way to get things done as a team. We’ve created a range of solutions and services that empower organizations to run the efficient and effective workshops they tell us they need.

Thanks to Klaxoon, Suzanne saves time selecting ready-to-use models from the Template library. An access link is also shared beforehand, allowing everyone to prepare and the live workshop to run efficiently.

The solution: a collaboraive platform you can adapt to your teamwork needs

Suzanne is a relatively new convert to Klaxoon, she discovered it at a major annual conference where a colleague waxed lyrical about it - having tried it out at one of the exhibition booths. With the opportunity to try out the whiteboard technology herself, Frawley could quickly see that it might make life a whole lot easier when it came to facilitating the workshops that make up a large part of her role. 

Suzanne leads a talent management team which does a lot of Design Thinking. What really stood out for her was the ability to use sticky notes much like in a traditional setting, but with so many other features. 

With over 100 Templates in the Klaxoon library, Suzanne quickly realized she could save time simply by shifting away from taking notes in team meetings using One Note. Using Klaxoon, there’s no need for separate note taking, as everything is saved on your board, easily accessible by participants and can be edited, updated or copied as necessary. 

It’s a very engaging process, completely the opposite of the ‘one way’ approach Suzanne’s team had adopted previously.

The Klaxoon way of working is often described as conversational, and it’s so easy for teams to get involved. So easy in fact, that Suzanne used to schedule an hour for her meetings, but has now reduced them to 45 minutes. 

Suzanne is confident that the team can get through all the required business activity within 30 minutes, cutting the working time in half, but likes to keep an extra 15’ for background topics or social catching up – something that’s even more important since the pandemic began.

The team has access to the platform throughout the week, so there’s plenty of time for preparation or revisiting of action points or reminders from previous weeks. The Templates are great prompts, and she has found that everyone is more concise and precise. While it’s fantastic to get more done in less time, it’s also pleasing to see everyone having a good time while they use it! 

Suzanne is very clear that her team are more engaged, she talks less, and she doesn’t have to work as hard – once the Template is set up, it takes care of itself!

The majority of Klaxoon users also take advantage of the available data insights to measure the success of their workshops in terms of participation levels, number of ideas etc. 

Another bonus of this system is that people who are out of office can check back and see what went on, or add their own notes in advance. 

Suzanne’s team use it integrated with Teams, which works seamlessly and they love the color coding that easily allows them to show what they’ve accomplished, their focus for the week ahead, as well as any difficulties and obstacles that they may need help with. It’s super simple to post an idea by clicking on the plus button and choosing a color.

The team recently used Klaxoon to hold brainstorming sessions with a team of senior leaders, which resulted in creating a new training offering within about 4 months – a timescale that is remarkable speedy. It worked out amazingly well, Suzanne tells us: the leaders told the team what they wanted and they were then able to give them what they needed. What’s more, all the participants played an active part, felt completely heard, and were extremely happy with the outcome.

The results: the future of team workshops? 

Our clients quickly learn that Klaxoon really does make effective and efficient workshops easy. We’re constantly updating and building out our Template library, and we’re confident that there’s great stuff in there. 

Many people also use the gamification features, drawing tools, and a new way of capturing information called Memo.

For Suzanne, it’s as simple as duplicating the Template for her meetings each week. She also uses the different views to extract and analyze what has been shared during the workshops. But for new users who might feel shy to get started, there are online coaching sessions available, as well as video tutorials that can help you.

We’re happy that Klaxoon works for small groups just as well as large groups of participants, and it’s worth noting that participants are free to join the workshops – as long as they’ve been sent an invitation.

Suzanne told us that when she mentions Klaxoon to colleagues now she’ll often hear ‘Oh that’s so fun!” in reply. So Klaxoon has the future of team workshops covered – we’ll save you time and make sure you have a great experience while you’re working on it! 

To know more about Suzanne's weekly workshop, watch the live replay available on our youtube channel:

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