• Late Papers: Late papers are the bane of every company secretary’s life. They cause a myriad of problems, including a lack of time for the secretary to review papers to ensure they are complete (including the appropriateness of any resolutions contained therein), working into the night under pressure to compile and despatch papers (generally via a board portal) and lack of time to read the papers themselves to become broadly familiar with the content ahead of the meeting. Papers received after the due date also means that directors may have less time to read the papers, which introduces further risk into the meeting process. It’s worth asking why are the papers late?, and trying to find ways of resolving the problem. Boards should back the secretary and condemn late papers.
  
• Version Control: Another (related) problem is version control, especially where many people are involved in preparing and reviewing a document. It can sometimes be very difficult to know what is the final paper if the filename isn’t properly labelled as ‘final’. This includes agendas. Agenda-setting can be a very complex iterative process, with many people involved along the way, and keeping control of the latest (and hopefully final) version can be challenging. Late changes can be a nightmare – often requiring a lot of rework. Automated systems are becoming essential, rather than a luxury here!
  
• Scheduling and Moving Meetings: Arranging meetings is a time-consuming process. Ideally, meetings should be scheduled 2 years out to avoid situations where directors’ diaries are already filled with other commitments. Get in early! Like late papers and last-minute changes to agendas, moving a meeting can take many hours of rework. An automated scheduling system has many advantages over traditional methods.
  
• Minutes: The expectation to get the right balance of detail (based on an assumption of a sound understanding of the content) can be extremely challenging and time consuming, especially if the secretary is new to the company and industry – almost every company / organisation has its own operating vocabulary. The rule of thumb is that minutes require around 3-4 hours of drafting time for every one hour of the meeting, which means that a two-hour meeting will take 8 hours of drafting time. Extending that out to a (reasonably) realistic situation, where there are 3 x 2-hour committee meetings and 1 x 3-hour board meeting in a meeting cycle, that would require a minimum of 36 hours or approximately 1 week of drafting time, where are many other follow-up activities and regular tasks still to be done during that time. Pre-drafting (“skeleton” minutes) can save time. It can also be helpful to block out time in the diary for drafting minutes, although that can be much easier said than done – noting that following each meeting many things have to be done, including communicating actions for management, executing transaction documents, lodging forms with regulators, dealing with urgent requests, etc. Further, if organisations choose to hold their committee meetings 1 or 2 weeks before a board meeting, that can prevent the secretary from getting to the committee minutes, as they then have to focus on preparing for the board meeting, with everything that entails. A ‘split’ meeting cycle means that one meeting cycle effectively becomes two separate cycles!
  
• Volume of Work: It seems that organisations get busier every year as a consequence of increased regulation and corporate activity. Secretarial work is typically very “lumpy”, with many peaks and some quieter periods (although these are getting less every year).Seconding staff from panel law firms and hiring external governance professionals can provide relief during the really busy (almost out of control) periods – especially if there’s a project or discrete piece of work … and providing there is a budget for this of course!
  
• Lack of Resources: Similar to the point above, it seems that organisations tighten their budgets, asking business units to do more with less every year. Streamlining processes and introducing technology can help, but it may be necessary to step back and carefully think about what things really need to be done, given the finite resources. This can be a real opportunity to rethink the secretarial space and engineer a manageable workload. After all, burnout and stress-related injuries are not in anyone’s interest.

References

https://www.boardintelligence.com/blog/best-practice-meeting-minutes-with-artificial-intelligence

https://www.ibabs.com/en/how-to-take-meeting-minutes/