How to Choose the Right Meeting Cadence for Remote Teams

Leila Cruz

Content Partnership Specialist

January 30, 2023

Max 12min read

Remote and hybrid work is here to stay.

And with this working model, keeping teams connected and informed at all times can be difficult (add the different time zones to make things even more challenging). 👀

So, in an effort to keep alignment with our teams, we’ve turned to scheduled meetings to run through updates, review action items, give feedback, and the list goes on. But the thing is, time is precious.

This is especially true when working in a fast-paced working environment because you’ll need to ensure you’re making the most out of your meetings.

This is when knowing the purpose of the meeting, having a meeting agenda, and scheduling the right meeting cadence can make a significant difference for your team.

In this article, you’ll learn what a meeting cadence is, how often to schedule meetings, and meeting management tools you can use to keep your meetings to a minimum and your remote teams updated at all times. We’ve also added a few tips and suggestions to help you determine what works best for your team, along with meeting templates to structure your calls and make them as productive as possible.

What is a Meeting Cadence?

A meeting cadence simply refers to how often a meeting is held.

For example, if you and a direct report check in every Friday morning, that’s a weekly meeting cadence. If you have a request to meet every other month, that’s a bimonthly cadence.

For remote teams, this can be more difficult to navigate. The challenge for every company is how frequently meetings should take place. In an increasingly distributed workforce, face-to-face Zoom calls have seemed to replace a lot of in-person meetings and sometimes become the only interaction you’ll have with your team.

And while we all love to catch a glimpse at someone’s pet in the background of a call, these can actually hinder employee happiness and productivity, as they can be disruptive if too many meetings take over their day.

So, how do you balance your schedule and find the right meeting cadence for your remote teams?

Let’s find out.

Finding the Right Meeting Cadence for You

The right meeting cadence will be different for every company and its needs. Some teams will require more or less meeting frequency depending on their roles, projects, and the type of meeting.

Depending on the type of meeting, the most common meeting cadences are:

• Daily meetings
• Weekly meetings
• Bi-weekly team meetings
• Monthly meetings
• Quarterly meetings

Aside from setting a meeting cadence and type of meeting, you’ll also have to determine which meetings can be done asynchronously or synchronously. Can you communicate updates through a messaging app or within a project management tool with messaging features?

Regardless, your goal is to keep your teams updated and on track to hit their goals and allow for enough freedom for everyone to work asynchronously and autonomously without adding too many meetings to their work schedule. 

Asynchronous vs. synchronous meetings

Once you’ve determined that you’ve got a weekly cadence for one project and another weekly cadence for an all-staff check-in, that doesn’t mean these have to be formatted in the same way.

The first step in determining the format of your meeting is to decide if the meeting is information-seeking or information-giving. This matters a lot when you’re determining how to check in best. 

Information-seeking meetings can fall into any of the following categories:

• A kickoff meeting for a new project
• A project team meeting to discuss the next steps
• Management meeting to check in on how teams are running
• A one-on-one with a direct report to check in on goals and tasks

These types of meetings are generally great to be in person or a quick virtual update over a video conferencing call like Zoom.

Here are a few examples of information-giving meetings:

• A daily standup
• A project update
• A company’s annual report

Establishing the right team meeting cadence for your company, along with the right meeting format, will cut down on low-value meetings and let everyone focus on being productive and stoked to be at work.

Now, here are a few meeting cadences and types to consider, along with templates to help you keep your meetings productive for all attendees.

Team Meeting Cadence Suggestions (Including Free Helpful Templates)

1. Daily meetings

Daily standup meetings are informal meetings that are held daily. They’re necessary and useful for teams, such as engineering and development teams, to ensure alignment, share findings, and help identify blockers.

While daily meetings might seem like a great way to stay updated with daily progress and changes, they might be counterproductive and disruptive if not managed properly.

So, to make the most of your daily meeting and ensure a productive session, it’s best to come to the meeting prepared with an agenda and a templatized document that your team members can easily refer to at any time and fill out before the meeting.

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Tip: Create your own or use this customizable Daily Standup Meeting Template by ClickUp to give you and your teams an organized, structured, and repeatable system for capturing and viewing daily updates.

This template is available in ClickUp Whiteboards and customized in any way to support your unique workflows. It also saves your input and reflects it in real-time, and because it’s built within ClickUp, your team can insert links to tasks and connect this document alongside their work.

2. Weekly meetings

There are various types of meetings that can be scheduled on a weekly basis. One of the most important meetings to have in this cadence is one-on-one meetings.

One-on-one meetings give managers and leaders one-on-one time with their direct reports or colleagues. It provides designated time to connect and build rapport with each other and ensures employees are given the support they need to succeed in their roles.

These meetings are also a good opportunity to align on goals, get a pulse check on workload, and provide feedback to ensure expectations are met.

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Make your weekly check-in meetings productive and standardize your weekly one-on-one meetings by using the One-on-One Meeting Template by ClickUp.

This template can be applied to ClickUp Docs, where you can note important details such as priorities, action items, and more. Keep all your weekly meeting notes in one place by adding a new page within the same Doc. You also have the option to share this Doc with others or keep this Doc private to ensure a safe space for your employees.

3. Monthly meetings

Monthly recurring meetings are important as check-in meetings with your team. During these meetings, you can get updates on monthly goals, review progress to ensure your team is on track to hit their quarterly goals, and identify bottlenecks and blockers to set your team up for success in the upcoming months.

An example of a meeting that can be scheduled on a monthly cadence is project team meetings, where project teams and stakeholders gather to discuss the status of their current projects.

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Give both teams and stakeholders an easy-to-digest visual representation of your project summary using the Project Status Report Template by ClickUp.

This template is available in ClickUp Whiteboards, where your team can collaborate, add updates, make changes, and more simultaneously or asynchronously. Use this template to keep all stakeholders up to date on the development, prevent problems before they occur, and guarantee that the project will be completed within the allotted time frame.

4. Quarterly meetings

Quarterly meetings are great for sharing project updates, discussing findings from the last quarter, celebrating wins, and preparing for the upcoming quarter with your team or the entire organization. If done properly, these meetings can help uplift your team’s spirits, improve cross-functional alignment, and keep everyone on track to hit their goals.

There are many uses for quarterly meetings, but some of the most common ones are planning meetings, board meetings, and all-hands meetings.

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Tip: Easily plan your next company-wide quarterly meeting and delegate work with the All-Hands Meeting Template by ClickUp.

This template provides pre-set Custom Statutes, Custom Fields, and multiple views to give you a structured and detailed overview of your tasks and ensure you cover every important announcement. Use the template as is, or customize it to fit your needs. It also comes with a Getting Started Guide to help you make the most of this template.

5 Questions to Ask Before Making a New Meeting Request

The key to productive meetings is making sure they’re necessary in the first place. Here are a few questions to ask yourself or your team before setting up a meeting.

1. What is the goal of this meeting?

Is this meeting’s goal to offer new information to key players, or is it simply for people to update the team?

This is always a good first question to ask yourself when setting up a new cadence. 

Here are a few examples of how this question might determine how often a meeting is scheduled:

New project

• Meeting Purpose: New marketing initiative
• Meeting Cadence: Weekly check-ins for a status report and next steps

Stand-up

• Meeting Purpose: Regular updates with the manager and or team lead
• Meeting Cadence: Daily stand up to see what everyone is actively working on

Project updates

• Meeting Purpose: Update on the project status
• Meeting Cadence: Daily check-in or weekly check-in, depending on the high priority

2. Can this meeting happen asynchronously? 

If it’s a quick check-in or update, think about the information you need and the time it takes to make it happen. And that’s more than the time allotted.

Consider the back-and-forth for scheduling, the preparation that needs to be done before the meeting, and then the meeting itself—they all add up in time.

As a remote or distributed team, you can utilize other communication tools to support asynchronous communication.

Some meetings by nature, such as big projects and important business decisions, require different stakeholders to weigh in real-time, which is always easier to do in person or on a Zoom call. 

But for meetings largely motivated by updates, setting aside time for an in-person check-in is unnecessary. In fact, these are best suited to be done asynchronously and, in that case, can be done more frequently.

3. Is this a high-priority or urgent task?

Some projects will take priority over others with tight deadlines. Only team leaders will know what these projects are and be able to determine how frequent these check-ins need to be.

If the task is urgent, determine the best way to communicate with your team, whether that be a Zoom call, a video recording, or noting priorities within the task.

4. Do these types of meetings regularly run over the allotted time?

Meetings that frequently get cut short might be a reason to schedule those meetings to be more frequent rather than longer, but it all depends from team to team. For others, sitting in meetings for over an hour may not be as productive. In this case, shorter meetings with a more regular cadence could help cover more ground and keep conversations focused.

5. Do we run out of items to discuss in these types of meetings?

On the flip side, if you’re doing a daily check-in call where there isn’t much to say, consider consolidating those into a weekly check-in and moving those daily updates to asynchronous rather than in-person or conference calls.

How to Improve Your Meetings With ClickUp

Remote and hybrid working environments can be a little tricky when it comes to team collaboration.

Keep your teams connected no matter where they are in the world by giving them a project management tool with team collaboration features like ClickUp.

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management and productivity tool built with teams in mind. It’s a project management tool at heart that lets you, your team, and the entire organization plan your priorities, simplify your workflow and keep track of your progress and timelines—all in one place.

As for team collaboration, it offers hundreds of features, including a collaborative Docs and Whiteboard feature where teams can brainstorm, document strategies, and more. Streamline communication with the built-in Chat view to give your team a designated space to chat about projects, questions, and updates.

And easily access your emails and keep your conversations in one place with the Email in ClickUp feature, which lets you send and receive emails without leaving ClickUp. 🔥

It also provides a comments feature that allows your team to comment within tasks, Docs, and attachments for Proofing and assign it to a specific person, making it easier than ever to collaborate with each other, work asynchronously, and provide feedback—without having to schedule a meeting. ☝️

And if you’re a visual learner or have team members that are, simply use Clip, the in-app screen recorder by ClickUp, to record high-quality videos and send them to your team with a comment. This is especially helpful when explaining complex topics when you need to show a step-by-step tutorial, or presenting an update with visuals.

Use this feature to eliminate the need to hop on another meeting or create long email threads, which is something that everyone on your team can (and will) appreciate. 👌

And if you must schedule a remote meeting, don’t sweat. ClickUp can help you stay prepared, keep your meeting productive, and make the most of your time with your team.

How? Just follow these steps:

1. Meeting agenda: Create a structured meeting agenda on your own or use the pre-built meeting templates by ClickUp and customize them to fit your needs
2. Build a view of your choice: Come to your meeting prepared and ready to present. Build a project timeline in Timeline or Gantt Chart view, map out strategies in Whiteboards or Docs, create a custom Dashboard to bring all your important information and get reports in one view, and more
3. Recurring tasks and due dates: Set up a task in ClickUp specifically for the meeting or set it as a recurring task to remind you and attendees when the next meeting is. You can also look at your tasks and schedule in the Calendar view
4. Identify and invite your attendees: Add single or multiple assignees to the task to notify who’s involved in the meeting
5. Share your task, meeting agenda, and other visuals: Attach your meeting agenda, work views, and more to the task within the comments or task description, and share it with your team, specific person, or group of people
6. Connect ClickUp to Zoom: Integrate Zoom to ClickUp to access the Zoom app within ClickUp at any time, and use the screen share option in Zoom to present your meeting agenda, timelines, reports in Dashboards in ClickUp, and so on
7. Have a productive call and take notes: Hop on the call, take meeting notes, and list action items in ClickUp Docs, Whiteboards, Notepad, or within a task

Now, that’s just one way to use ClickUp to improve your meetings. Get to know all the features in ClickUp to learn how you can maximize the platform to support all your business, project, and communication needs.

Schedule More Productive and Enjoyable Meetings

The key to productive meetings and workdays is to find an effective meeting cadence for you and your team, then use ClickUp to manage your projects, enhance team communication, and track goals and progress.

And because the platform is fully customizable and offers hundreds of features for project management and team collaboration, you can absolutely configure ClickUp in any way that supports your workflow and enhance cross-functional communication.

Use ClickUp as a meeting management software and its collaboration features to communicate updates, feedback, questions, and more to eliminate unnecessary meetings from your busy schedule and give your teams an open line of communication, no matter the time zone or where and when they work. 🌎

It also integrates with over 1,000 work tools, including video conferencing apps, Slack, and more, to help you streamline your team communication and bring all your work into one place.

It’s free to get started. Get access to ClickUp today!