There are few things in a working day more frustrating than receiving a meeting invitation that tells you almost nothing. No location, no agenda, no indication of whether you need to get in the car or just click a link. You accept it, add it to your diary, and only find out what it is actually about when you ring the organiser five minutes before asking what they need from you.
This happens constantly. And it is almost always avoidable.
Meeting invitations are a form of communication. A poorly constructed one sets the wrong tone before the meeting has even started. A well-constructed one gives everyone everything they need, avoids unnecessary back-and-forth, and demonstrates a basic level of professional respect for the other person’s time.
Here is what good looks like.
Make It Immediately Clear: Online or In Person
This should not be an afterthought. The moment someone receives your invite, they need to know whether they are opening a browser tab or getting in the car. Getting this wrong can waste someone’s entire morning.
The vast majority of meetings now happen virtually. For many organisations, more than 90% of meetings take place over Teams, Zoom, or a similar platform. Virtual has become the default assumption, and that is exactly where the confusion starts.
When an invite arrives with no label, the recipient’s first assumption is that it must be a Teams call. But the organiser may have had a face-to-face meeting in mind and simply not thought to say so. The recipient sits at their desk waiting for a link that was never sent. The organiser is in a meeting room waiting for someone who had no idea they were supposed to travel.
It runs the other way too. Many calendar systems generate a Teams link automatically when a meeting is created. The organiser books it, the link appears, and they assume the format is obvious. The recipient drives to the office. Neither person did anything unreasonable. Both made an assumption that turned out to be wrong.
All of it is solved by adding one word or short phrase to the meeting title.
The simplest fix is to put it in the meeting title. Not buried in the notes section, not implied by the presence or absence of a Teams link. In the title. The organiser should make it explicitly clear whether the meeting is onsite (in person), virtual, or both. “Catch-up: Teams call”, “Project review: Watford office” or “Quarterly review: Watford office + Teams” takes an extra three seconds to type and removes all ambiguity entirely.
If the meeting is in person, include the full address and any relevant details such as parking availability, building access instructions, or who to ask for at reception. If it is online, make sure the link is functional, visible, and not hidden three paragraphs into a block of auto-generated text.
Do not make people hunt for the information they need to attend your meeting.
Include an Agenda or at Minimum a Purpose
“Catch-up” is not an agenda. “Quick chat” is not a purpose. These phrases tell the recipient nothing about what they need to prepare, what decisions will be made, or whether they actually need to be there at all.
You do not need to write a formal document. Two or three sentences is enough. What is the meeting trying to achieve? What, if anything, do you need from the other person beforehand? If there are materials to review, include them or link to them in the body of the invite.
A clear purpose also helps the recipient gauge the right level of preparation. A meeting to discuss a specific proposal requires different preparation to a general project update. Leaving that ambiguous wastes everyone’s time.
Give Enough Notice
Booking a meeting for in an hour is occasionally necessary. It should not be the default. When someone receives a last-minute invite, they have usually already planned their time and have to make a choice between disrupting their existing work or declining. Neither is ideal.
For anything other than a genuine emergency, give at least 24 hours notice. For meetings that require preparation, travel, or the involvement of multiple people, give more. A week is not unreasonable for a meeting that requires someone to block out a significant portion of their day.
Consider what you are asking of the other person. If you are booking a face-to-face meeting and they need to commute or travel, a same-day invite is rarely appropriate.
Check Availability Before Booking
Most calendar systems, including Outlook and Google Calendar, allow you to view other people’s availability before sending an invite. Use it. Sending an invite for a slot that is already blocked in someone’s diary, and then waiting for them to decline and suggest alternatives, is an entirely avoidable loop.
If you are booking a meeting with multiple attendees, use the scheduling assistant to find a time that works before you send anything. If no slot is available, a quick message asking when they are free takes thirty seconds and is far more considerate than firing invites at someone until one lands in a gap.
Get the Duration Right
The default meeting lengths in most calendar tools are 30 minutes and 60 minutes. These have become the standard because they are the default, not because most meetings actually need that long.
A useful habit is to set meetings to 25 or 50 minutes instead of 30 or 60. This gives everyone a five or ten minute buffer between back-to-back meetings to write up notes, take a break, or move to the next location. Back-to-back 60-minute meetings from 9am to 5pm leave no time to think, act on decisions, or simply breathe.
If a conversation only needs 15 minutes, book 15 minutes. Booking 30 because it is the default means the meeting will fill 30 minutes even if everything is resolved in the first ten.
Cancel Properly and Promptly
If circumstances change and you can no longer attend or no longer need the meeting, cancel it as soon as you know. Do not wait until five minutes before, and do not simply not show up.
When you cancel, send a note with the cancellation explaining why and, if applicable, when you would like to reschedule. A bare calendar cancellation with no message is better than nothing but still leaves the other person without context.
If you are the organiser and the meeting is no longer necessary, cancel it rather than letting it sit in everyone’s diary. Leaving a meeting in the calendar that you know is not going ahead is disrespectful of the other person’s time, particularly if they are preparing for it.
Be Deliberate About Who You Invite
Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. Adding people as optional attendees is sometimes appropriate, but if their attendance is genuinely optional, consider whether they need to be on the invite at all. A follow-up summary or email may serve them better.
For every person you add to a meeting, ask whether their time is best spent there. Large meetings with many attendees are expensive in terms of collective time, and often the number of people in the room could be reduced significantly without affecting the outcome.
A Note on Recurring Meetings
Recurring meetings deserve particular attention. They are easy to set up and easy to forget about. A weekly team call that was useful when a project was active can continue running long after the reason for it has passed.
Review recurring meetings periodically. If a meeting no longer serves a clear purpose, cancel the series. If it still serves a purpose but the frequency is too high, reduce it. A monthly meeting is sometimes more productive than a weekly one if the weekly version tends to have little to discuss.
It Comes Back to Respect
All of this comes down to one principle: respect for other people’s time. A poorly constructed meeting invite, a last-minute cancellation, or a meeting that could have been an email are all, in small ways, signs that the organiser has not fully considered the impact on the other people involved.
Getting this right does not require a great deal of effort. It requires a small amount of thought before hitting send. And in environments where people’s diaries are already full, that thought is noticed and appreciated.
