Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, people continue to attend meetings of the governance. This can be a hassle to those who prefer attend in person, but it’s also a great way for the administration and their staff members to demonstrate their responsiveness to citizens.

The main challenge is to ensure that the correct governance online meetings technology for participation is in place, with voice, screen and video sharing all being essential. Many organisations depend on emailing information packs with attachments or file-sharing software with folders that can be downloaded. However, these options don’t support the well-organized processing and distribution of agenda items.

Other issues are that it’s more difficult to engage in the informal conversations that often accompany meetings in person. However, it is also a key way that people connect and trust one another therefore opening the meeting early, and adding an opportunity for informal connections or using chat in your virtual meeting platform for smaller groups, can help with building the relationships that will enable strong and effective governance.

Governance meetings can also be used to fine-tune roles and responsibilities when new members join the team or roles are altered or a new task is needed. This will stop these discussions from stealing other meetings and enable the team to be effective and efficient.