Why do we need best practice guidance on minute writing?
Best practice guidance on minute writing helps governance teams to ensure they’re meeting legal requirements and satisfying directors’ needs. It’s also essential for helping governance teams to work efficiently.
Producing minutes that are accurate, take the right tone, and capture an appropriate level of detail is far from easy and requires skill, knowledge, and judgement. It also takes considerable time, effort, and cost. Findings from our meeting minutes calculator suggest that governance teams spend an average of 10 hours writing up the minutes of an average board or committee meeting.
This cost is also rising. Internally, the number of meetings is growing, with our research tools jointly built with the CGIUKI suggesting a 25% increase in committee meetings since 2019. Externally, new expectations from both regulators and stakeholders mean that the remit of governance teams is expanding too. The pressure on governance teams is mounting.
Historically, guidance around best practice minute writing has focused entirely on quality. But best practice that can’t be sustained in the long term isn’t best practice at all. So, how do we update our view of what good looks like before the burden becomes just too much to bear?
What do best practice board meeting minutes look like?
Delivering best practice in minute writing isn’t just about delivering high-quality outputs; it’s also about delivering an efficient and cost-effective process.
It helps to look at the full process from start to finish. By breaking the process down into discrete tasks, you can identify tasks that could be made more efficient and explore new technologies to streamline your efforts. If you haven’t already, a good place to start is to use our free calculator to work out the full cost of minute writing for your team or organisation.
At the same time, you should ensure you’ve implemented the best practice tips below, so you can be confident you’re delivering the quality outputs that your stakeholders expect.
What are the essential elements of board minutes?
The purpose of board and committee meeting minutes, according to the Chartered Governance Institute UK & Ireland, is to “provide an accurate, impartial and balanced internal record of the business transacted at a meeting.” They serve as a board’s institutional memory and provide guidance to the board as they plan and make strategic decisions.
They include content such as meeting details, the agenda and key discussion points, decisions and resolutions, action items, and compliance and governance matters.
Using a template to take board meeting minutes can be helpful but remember that there’s no “one-size-fits-all”, and you should tailor your minutes to your organisation and industry.
Required content and format
To deliver best practice meeting minutes, you should include essential features presented in a set format. These essential features are:
- The meeting’s date and time
- Names of directors attending, and those who did not
- Corrections and amendments to previous meeting minutes
- Additions to the current agenda
- Whether a quorum is present
- Motions taken or rejected and objections raised
- Voting and the outcome of the vote
- Actions taken or agreed to be taken
- Next steps
- Items to be held over
- New business
- Open discussion or public participation
- Next meeting date and time
- Time of adjournment
Level of detail and tone
Minutes should include enough details so that a new director could understand what the board did and why it made certain decisions. Be concise but comprehensive, ensuring you capture key discussions without going into unnecessary detail.
Minutes should also be factual, free of personal opinions, bias, or emotional language, and written in the third person.
What do you need to know about legal requirements and compliance?
In the UK, board meeting minutes best practice demands that all minutes comply with relevant legal, regulatory, and governance standards. The legal requirements depend on the type of organisation, for example whether it’s publicly listed, privately owned, or a charity. The Companies Act 2006 is the primary legislation governing companies in the UK.
Regulatory standards
Regulatory bodies such as the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) impose additional governance requirements for listed companies and financial institutions.
Additionally, compliance with local data protection legislation (such as GDPR in the UK) is essential to protect sensitive company information and handle personal data appropriately.
Record-keeping obligations
Under the UK Companies Act, companies are legally required to maintain accurate board minutes for at least 10 years, ensuring they provide a true and fair record of discussions and decisions. These records must be available for director review and, when necessary, regulatory inspection.
How do you write effective minutes?
A comprehensive board meeting minutes template can help you produce more structured minutes, but it may not always suit your specific situation or use case. It’s more important to know what information to record and how to present it.
Using Board Intelligence’s board portal app in virtual or in-person meetings can help to make minute-taking easier. You can easily navigate through board packs and search within documents for information that’s referred to in the meeting. You can also use the annotation tools in your app to highlight key parts of a paper that you may need to come back to when typing your minutes up.
Documenting discussions and decisions
Good minute-taking is an art. You need to capture what the board has said and done, but when members go off on a tangent or down a rabbit hole it can be difficult to turn these fragmented conversations into a coherent whole.
Write a short statement of actions taken by the board for each agenda item and briefly explain the rationale for the activity, along with a summary of the most important points shared.
As the board meeting progresses, document who voted for or against a motion and any reasons given for dissenting votes. When recording motions, include the exact wording and any amendments, noting who proposed and seconded them.
Record the key discussion points that influenced the decision, especially strategic concerns or insights. Summarise key points from board papers, paying particular attention to alternatives that were presented and considered for important decisions. High-quality board papers can make this task much easier.
Handling sensitive information
Before the meeting, you need to identify any topics that might be considered sensitive or confidential. These can include legal matters, financial details, personnel issues, or strategic plans.
Include only high-level content for certain discussions, ensuring that the minutes reflect decisions but not the sensitive details of the discussion. Follow the relevant local data protection regulations to maintain confidentiality and safeguard sensitive business and personal information.
Share the minutes only with those who need to be informed and ensure confidentiality agreements bind them. Redact sensitive details before sharing the minutes with non-board members.
If sensitive matters were discussed in virtual meetings, additional security protocols, such as the use of encrypted platforms, restricted access, or digital NDAs, are needed. For more, read our board meeting minute taking tips for virtual board meetings.
Using AI to write board meeting minutes
Generative AI is transforming how governance teams produce board and committee meeting minutes.
AI excels at converting data from one representation to another — be it “image to text”, “text to spreadsheet”, or “French to English”. And that’s precisely the process that underpins minute writing; decisions made by the board (data) get converted from notes or transcripts (one representation of said data) into proper meeting minutes (another representation of the same data).
That’s why we developed our own AI-powered software solution, Minute Writer, to help governance teams make the most of the opportunity this time-saving technology presents:
- Designed to be a one-purpose tool, it turns notes or transcripts into minutes—keeping the details that matter without outputting anything that you haven’t inputted.
- Trained on a curated dataset of minutes, it’s seen what best practice looks like and aims to generate the same level of quality every time.
- Built with governance in mind, it breaks the process into multiple steps, each with checks and balances that keep you in the driving seat, so that you can oversee and guide what the AI does at every stage.
Minute Writer won’t automate the entire process, but it will speed up the more tedious and time-consuming tasks, so that your governance team can get on with producing minutes that are truly best practice — process included.
What steps should you include in your review and approval process?
Review the minutes by verifying facts, double-checking figures, and ensuring all votes, motions, and action items are accurately captured. Before finalising the minutes, send a draft to the board chair or other designated individual to seek approval. Make amendments as requested.
AI tools can flag potential inconsistencies or errors in the draft minutes, such as unclear motions or missing action items. Many board management platforms include templates and workflows designed for minute approval.
At the start of a board meeting, boards must approve meeting minutes for the previous meeting by unanimous consent. Approving meeting minutes is a critical step in maintaining the integrity of board operations as unapproved minutes are not considered official documents. These approvals won’t consume much board meeting time or derail the meeting agenda if the following steps have been taken before the meeting.
Draft review procedures
Once the initial draft is compiled, circulate the minutes as soon as possible — within three to five working days after the meeting. This ensures the details are fresh in directors’ minds, so any issues can be easily identified and promptly addressed. Use a secure platform, such as a board portal, so board members can access and review the minutes as needed.
Encourage feedback and invite members to highlight errors or suggest further corrections before the next meeting. Using your board portal’s internal collaboration feature means that board members can share their notes with you securely.
Distribution and storage
Distribute approved minutes to board members using a dedicated document management solution and use board portal software to archive approved minutes. This ensures compliance, reliability, and robust security during both physical and virtual board meetings. The UK Companies Act mandates that all board meeting minutes be stored for at least 10 years.
What are the common pitfalls to avoid?
Given the breadth, depth, and complexity of board and committee meeting minutes, and the volume of meetings requiring minuting, mistakes can happen. Here are some common pitfalls to watch out for:
- Ambiguous descriptions of board actions
- Excessive detail or verbatim transcripts
- Not clearly identifying action points
- Failure to record conflicts of interest
- Failing to file correctly and mishandling sensitive information
- Including information that could legally harm the board
- Failing to get the minutes approved so they become an official document
- Failure to document a quorum
Risks around confidentiality, accuracy, and completeness can be managed by taking the following steps.
Managing confidentiality
Maintain confidentiality by using secure communication channels, confidentiality agreements, and limiting document access. Security measures should also include shredding physical documents and notes after use and permanently deleting electronic files from temporary storage and backups. Encrypted virtual meeting platforms and board portals should be used to prevent unauthorised interception.
Ensuring accuracy and completeness
Using a consistent template that captures essential details, key discussion points, and action items can help to ensure accuracy and completeness, especially if you have a large team producing minutes. You can also use AI-powered tools to flag potential errors or inconsistencies in the draft minutes, such as missing action items or unclear motions.
If you’d like to learn more about best practice minute writing, read our article dedicated to governance experts’ top tips on the matter.
They say meetings are where minutes are taken and hours are wasted, but just how much time and money are your meeting minutes costing you? Use our free calculator to find out.
Uncover your hidden costsFAQs
How should virtual or hybrid board meeting minutes differ from in-person meetings?
Virtual and hybrid minutes should note the meeting platform used and any technical issues that may have impacted discussions or voting. Specify how the quorum was established, especially for hybrid meetings where participants join from multiple locations. If sensitive matters were discussed, document any additional security protocols, such as using encrypted platforms, restricted access, or digital NDAs.
What is the best way to document abstentions and dissenting opinions in board minutes?
Record the motion and vote outcome by stating the exact wording of the motion or resolution and the total number of votes for, against, and abstentions. Identify abstaining or dissenting members by listing their names. If a board member chooses to explain their dissent or abstention, include a concise summary.
How long should organisations retain different types of board meeting minutes?
The Companies Act requires all UK companies to retain board meeting minutes for at least 10 years. However, specific industries and regulatory bodies, such as those in the healthcare and financial services industries, impose additional requirements.