How to Take Minutes in a Meeting in 10 Simple Steps

Taking minutes in a meeting is a huge responsibility, as organizational effectiveness and strategic ability depend on reviewing meetings and their notes. Entrusted by your manager or the meeting chairperson with this task, your role is to capture the essence of the meeting and communicate this to everyone afterwards.

Taking minutes in a meeting can be challenging, as you’re required to multitask by following the meeting and recording many different speakers accurately at the same time.

This article is the ultimate guide on what you need to know about how to write meeting minutes, including a chronological list of tips on things to prepare for and do, and also some best practices to make the challenging process of taking minutes a little bit easier.

What are meeting minutes?

Meeting minutes are written records of meetings. They capture the general discussion, action points and decisions made during the meeting, as well as practicalities like the location, any other business, timings and attendees. As well as serving as a record, minutes also lay out what happens after the meeting in terms of who is responsible for what, and any deadlines.

Writing meeting minutes is an important professional skill, as they ensure everyone who attended the meeting (and anyone who needs to know about it) has the same record of what was discussed — and they, therefore, provide a reliable reference.

To this end, sometimes meeting minutes can be legally important or critical in other ways for the organization.

What to include in meeting minutes

For them to be relied upon and be of maximum use to employers, meeting minutes need to include lots of information. Here’s what to include when writing meeting minutes:

• Date and time of the meeting (and what time the meeting was closed)
• Location (or video conferencing platform used)
• List of attendees (highlighting the chairperson and minute taker) and absences/apologies
• The purpose of the meeting
• Agenda items discussed
• Key points of discussion
• Decisions made
• Action items, including those responsible and any deadlines
• Next meeting date, time, location, and chairperson
• Signature of the minute taker and chairperson

How to write meeting minutes

Effectively writing meeting minutes takes a fair amount of preparation beforehand, and organization during the meeting to ensure everything is captured. Here is a useful guide for how to take minutes, including everything that you need to know to ensure your minutes are a barometer of accuracy and professionalism.

1. Create copies of reports

Before the meeting starts, gather all the relevant supporting documentation you might need. This might include the meeting agenda if there is one, previous meeting minutes, reports, presentation slides, and anything that will be used in the meeting.

Try to review these documents before the meeting starts to familiarize yourself with the content and to assist with creating a meeting template. This will help you anticipate discussions and keep you on track as the meeting progresses. Take the documents into the meeting with you, and distribute them to attendees if you have time.

2. Prepare a template beforehand

Having a minutes template will be very useful in keeping you organized and accurate as you record the meeting.

Use supporting documentation to create one specific to the meeting you’ll be attending. Include sections such as date, time and attendee list at the top, followed by a list of agenda items, action points and any other business. Have a space at the bottom where the minutes can be signed off.

Consider using a certain type of formatting, such as a table layout, to keep your minutes structured as you fill it in.

3. Record attendance

At the start of the meeting, it is the responsibility of the minute taker to record attendance.

Familiarize yourself with expected attendees so you know who to expect, and don’t be afraid to ask unexpected attendees to introduce themselves before you begin. Record job titles if applicable as well.

Cross-check attendees with a list of those invited and record “apologies” for anyone who isn’t present; encourage them to contact you beforehand so you have this information already prepared.

4. Keep time

Record the start time of the meeting, as well as the time the meeting ends. Seeing as the minute taker is recording the conversation as it processes, you might be responsible for keeping track of timings of the meeting as it progresses.

If there is an agenda, and you notice it is slipping or the meeting is falling behind, then prompt the chair of the meeting appropriately and help them keep the meeting under control. This will ensure everyone due to present an agenda point has a fair amount of time to speak.

5. Follow the agenda

The agenda will make it easy for you to follow the meeting and structure your notes. This way, you spend less time formatting and rearranging your notes after the meeting ends.

Following the agenda means that you can methodically work through the points, and even if the meeting chops and changes, your template structure will keep you organized. It will also aid you in following the discussion to ensure clarity of your minutes.

6. Record the key points

You won’t be able to record the meeting verbatim, and to be honest, most people who read minutes won’t want to sift through pages of speech to find the points they’re looking for.

Therefore, record the key points of the meeting only. Capture the essence of the conversation and the main points that people will be most interested in hearing about. In particular, follow the key points from the main decision-makers and meeting chair, as these will be of most importance and interest to those who read your minutes.

7. Record decisions and action items

It’s especially important to make a record of the key decisions and outcomes agreed on during the course of the meeting. This includes any ideas that were discussed as potential decisions that weren’t adopted for any reason.

Similarly, it’s essential to track action items. This is where tasks have been assigned to meeting attendees. Record who the task was assigned to, by whom, and any relevant information and deadlines that need to be traced. Document any follow-up and next steps needed for all this information.

8. Attach relevant documentation

As well as collecting any documentation available before the meeting starts, be sure to collect any documents shared during the course of the meeting. This might include handouts, supplementary reports or any other reference materials.

These documents can help you sense-check your minutes and should also be attached to the finished minutes before they’re distributed. This ensures that all aspects of the meeting are collated, recorded and distributed in a comprehensive and effective manner.

9. Create a final draft

After the meeting has ended, you’ll want to go over your minutes to format them, spell-check them and, most importantly, check them for accuracy and conciseness. This is vital, seeing as minutes are heavily relied upon to track organizational information.

If you’re unsure of any of the contents, reach out to the relevant people to double-check information; the last thing you want to do is address corrections and amendments after you have sent the minutes. Give the finished document one last once-over and get ready to sign it off.

10. Distribute the minutes

When you’ve created the final draft and confirmed any information you needed to, have the meeting minutes signed off by the chair of the meeting. Store the hard copy and scan it in.

Distribute the minutes electronically and ensure any applicable markup is included, such as labeling them “confidential” or limited to certain audiences. Store the minutes in an appropriate location for future reference or audits. You’ll also want to keep a copy handy to take into any follow-up meetings.

Tips for writing meeting minutes

Writing meeting minutes isn’t easy, and while having a structure and being organized is a great way to successfully complete the task, here are some handy tips to make minute-taking a little more efficient and straightforward:

1. Avoid jargon

Although writing minutes in an abridged way is important, using clear and accessible language is also vital to ensuring your minutes are understood by everyone. Avoid using jargon and abbreviations, and any lingo or terminology that anyone who wasn’t present in the meeting will struggle to understand.

2. Be objective

In a meeting, you're going to hear plenty of different viewpoints and angles on organizational matters. You might even be professionally invested in some of these angles.

It’s vital that, whatever your own thoughts on what is being discussed, you remain impartial and document everything fairly and objectively. Your professional credibility rests on this, and leaving out parts of the meeting will only reflect badly on you.

3. Record only important times

Chronicling the meeting is vital, but you don’t have to record timestamps throughout the meeting, nor do you have to record every date mentioned; doing so will only cause confusion. Instead, record only important times such as the start and finish time, and other critical dates and times, especially those relating to deadlines.

4. Use consistent formatting

Consistent formatting will ensure that your meeting minutes are easy to read, look neat and, therefore, give a professional and polished image. Using the same font and size all the way through, structuring your minutes with headings or table columns, and keeping to the same writing style are all ways to consistently format your minutes.

5. Use shorthand

Writing minutes is hard work, as your writing needs to keep up with the pace of speech, which won’t always happen. For your own benefit, and to ensure you don’t miss anything, creatively use shorthand in the meeting to keep pace.

This can simply be writing abridged sentences or key words, fleshing it out later after the meeting or, if you feel like a challenge, learning professional shorthand to become super-fast at documenting meetings.

Meanwhile, you might also find this video useful:

Final thoughts

Like with many things at work, taking minutes begins with effective planning and preparation to make your life easier. Maintaining a logical and efficient structure in the meeting makes the process of documenting key points a lot easier, and checking for accuracy before distributing them will ensure that the delivery of the minutes will reflect positively on you.

Finally, practice makes perfect: look for as many opportunities to take minutes as you can, and view the task as one that can help you grow professionally. Keep these points in mind and, before too long, your minutes will be the talk of the organization and lead to greater responsibility.

Got a question or want to share your own minute-taking tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments section below.

This article is a complete update of an earlier version originally published on October 30, 2018.