5 Meeting Policy Templates

A meeting policy is a formal organizational guideline that establishes rules and expectations for how meetings are scheduled, conducted, and evaluated. Meeting policies typically cover scheduling requirements (agendas, duration limits), attendance rules (caps, role-based invitations), and governance processes (recurring meeting reviews, exception handling). Research from MIT Sloan and Harvard Business Review shows that organizations with formal meeting policies report 35-73% higher productivity and 26% lower employee stress.

Most organizations benefit from implementing 2-3 complementary policies. Start with an agenda-required policy (highest impact, easiest to implement) and a no meeting day policy (most visible, best for culture change). Add duration caps or attendee caps based on your specific pain points. Implementing all 5 simultaneously is not recommended — roll them out over 2-3 quarters to avoid change fatigue.

Start with the agenda-required policy. It has the lowest implementation cost, requires no calendar tooling changes, and immediately improves meeting quality. GitLab, Atlassian, and Amazon all mandate written agendas. The second policy should be either a no meeting day (if your team suffers from meeting overload) or duration caps (if meetings consistently run long).

The two-pizza rule is a meeting size guideline created by Jeff Bezos at Amazon: if two pizzas cannot feed everyone in the meeting, the meeting has too many attendees. In practice, this means capping decision-making meetings at 6-8 people. Research from Bain & Company confirms that adding one person beyond 7 attendees reduces decision-making effectiveness by 10%.

Parkinson's Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Applied to meetings, this means a 60-minute meeting will fill 60 minutes even if the agenda could be covered in 25 minutes. Duration cap policies (25/50 minutes instead of 30/60) leverage this principle to force more focused, efficient meetings with built-in transition buffers.

Set all recurring meetings to automatically expire after 90 days. Two weeks before expiry, notify the organizer and require a simple renewal form: (1) current purpose, (2) updated attendee list, (3) frequency review, (4) recent meeting notes as evidence of value. Steven Rogelberg's research shows 50% of recurring meetings are unnecessary — a sunset policy forces regular evaluation without requiring anyone to make the uncomfortable decision to cancel.

DACI stands for Driver, Approver, Contributors, and Informed. The Driver owns the meeting outcome and facilitates. The Approver has final decision authority. Contributors provide input and expertise. The Informed group receives meeting notes but does NOT attend. Using DACI before each meeting typically reduces attendance by 30-40% because "Informed" participants realize they can get the outcomes without spending time in the meeting.

Meeting policies are especially effective for remote teams. Microsoft Work Trend Index data shows remote workers attend 153% more meetings than pre-pandemic levels. Formal policies provide the structure that in-office social norms previously enforced. GitLab, a fully remote company with 2,000+ employees, attributes much of their productivity to strict meeting policies including mandatory agendas and async-first communication.

The most effective enforcement combines technology and culture. Use calendar tools to auto-enforce duration limits and agenda requirements. Implement auto-decline for meetings on no-meeting days. Make policies self-enforcing by empowering anyone to decline meetings that violate the rules without penalty. Leadership modeling is critical — MIT Sloan research found that 68% of failed meeting policies lacked executive sponsorship.

Notable companies include Amazon (two-pizza rule, 6-page memo instead of presentations), Shopify (eliminated 322,000 hours of meetings in 2023), Atlassian (GSD Day, mandatory agendas), GitLab (async-first, all meetings optional, everything documented), Basecamp (minimal meeting culture, 30-minute max), and Asana (No Meeting Wednesdays since 2013). Each approaches meeting governance differently based on their culture and size.

Track five metrics at 30, 60, and 90 days: (1) total meeting hours per employee per week, (2) focus time blocks of 2+ uninterrupted hours, (3) employee satisfaction via pulse surveys, (4) policy compliance rate, and (5) project velocity or completion rates. Calculate financial ROI as: (average hourly rate) x (meeting hours eliminated per week) x (number of employees) x 52 weeks. For a 100-person company reducing meetings by 4 hours per week at $50/hour, that is $1,040,000 annually.

Yes. Startups with 10-50 employees can implement meeting policies faster (1-2 weeks vs. 4-6 weeks for enterprises) and often see proportionally larger benefits because every hour matters more. Start with just two policies: agenda required and duration caps. These are lightweight, require no tooling, and immediately improve meeting quality. As the team grows past 20 people, add a no meeting day to protect engineering and creative focus time.