Your Board Meeting is Over, What Next?

As a Corporate Secretary, what happens after your board meetings are as essential as the events involved in the preparation of the meeting itself. If your meeting was successfully held, then checking off your post meeting items is simply a beautifully tied bow on a well packaged gift. Check out these tips on how to successfully prepare for a meeting: Preparing for your Meeting.

The Corporate Secretary's work does not stop at the end of a meeting, there are always significant items that needs to be completed and effectively closed. Highlighted below are a few post meeting to-do items:

• Schedule a Meeting Debrief – Meeting debriefs should be held immediately following the close of the board meeting, with the aim of promptly summarizing the discussions held at the meeting and highlighting some of the crucial action items. The debrief usually includes internal staff that were in attendance at the board meeting. Meeting debriefs can shed a spotlight on how best to prioritize those action items and how to deal with any comments/ feedback received during the meeting.
• Document Action Items – It is best practice to have a formal documentation of all action items coming out of board meetings. This document should include the action item, who it is assigned to, the date the action item was initiated, the timeline for implementation and status update/comments. Having a formal documentation serves as a great reference material for making changes, and to ascertain the status of the items in real time. The Corporate Secretary also has the responsibility to follow up on these action items and ensure that whatever updates available are ready to be shared with the board at the next meeting.
• Execute Minutes of the Previous Meeting – Even though there is no requirement to do this, it is best practice to have minutes executed, particularly considering the significant weight minutes carry. The Corporate Secretary must prepare an execution copy of the approved minutes and provide this to the chair and secretary for their signatures. Usually, the execution copy of minutes are prepared ahead of a meeting and signatures are collected immediately following the conclusion of an in-person meeting. However, with the prevalence of virtual meetings, the execution of approved minutes is now completed electronically, once approved by the board in the recently concluded meeting..
• Distribution of Meeting/Presentation Materials – In some cases, it may be necessary to share meeting materials with board members following the meeting. If this is the case, the Corporate Secretary must ensure that the documents are password protected and board members must be informed that the documents are confidential and should not be re-distributed.
• Prepare Draft Minutes – Prepare draft minutes and circulate them with internal staff that were present at the meeting. Having the 1st draft of minutes between 1-3 days of the meeting is best practice. In those first few days, the meeting discussions are still fresh in mind and even though there are meeting notes that can be relied on, a fresh recollection of things might be more useful.
• Complete Regulatory Filings – Sometimes, when changes occur within a corporation, there is a requirement to notify the governing authorities of these changes. Changes such as appointment & resignation of directors, changes in corporate name, address, or shareholding, etc. must be filed with the appropriate authorities and within the timeline stipulated by regulations.

For the Corporate Secretary, the end of a board meeting usually means the beginning of another – the train never stops! These few to-do items can help you stay organized and well prepared for your board meeting cycle.

Please share your thoughts on some of your post-meeting checklist items, if missing from the above. Thank you.