Conference room usage etiquette: A policy template

How to know if your company needs a conference room usage policy

Similar to sharing an apartment with roommates, an office and its conference rooms need a common set of ground rules. The sooner these are set, the better off your company and employees will be.

While the process of building a policy takes time based on current employee processes and habits, you need to establish a baseline for how you expect conference rooms to be used, reserved, and serviced. If your office has several different types of rooms based on meeting purpose, include that information in your etiquette policy to ensure all meeting rooms are used as intended. If most conference rooms have tech amenities, it’s necessary to establish policies around how employees should use those, as well as how to report technical issues to management.

Communicating conference room usage etiquette across different departments in the office helps:

• Enforce rules and guidelines people need to follow when booking conference room spaces
• Reduce stolen rooms, double bookings, interrupted and no-show meetings
• Free up unused rooms and make it easier to find the ideal conference room
• Ensure seating (such as chairs or sofas) and resources aren’t ‘borrowed’ from other conference rooms
  

How to customize a conference room usage policy

In this template you'll be able to customize:

• Who needs to abide by conference room usage etiquette and what the meeting organizer’s responsibilities are
• How you expect employees to find and reserve conference room spaces
• How the company will enforce rules to require check-ins and reduce no-show meetings
• When (and how) employees can report issues with conference rooms or conference room usage
• How equipment in each conference room is intended to be used, and more.