Annual General Meetings (AGMs) are an essential occasion for shareholders and members to take part in an organization’s governance, providing an opportunity to report on the past and plan for future strategies. Effective preparation plays a key role in the success of this crucial corporate governance event.
Yet, you may come across several challenges and difficulties while planning and convening an AGM. For instance, find a location that can meet a full range of needs, allow participation and giving members plenty of opportunities to engage with the board, while guaranteeing robustness and accuracy of voting are at times hard to achieve, and that’s why it is important to rely on safe and efficient methods.
There are several factors to consider while planning an AGM.
Meeting attendance is one of the most crucial factors in determining the success of your AGM. This may be a challenge without a solution that automates the RSVP and registration processes. Without an automated and secure registration process, in fact, you are forced into manual and lengthy processes to ensure quorum is met.
Security is critical for the success of your AGM. Due to the nature of such events which can be addressing controversial matters, the risk of security breaches is high and often overlooked and may completely derail your AGM. Therefore, ensuring the security of your meetings must be a key priority. Furthermore, voting based on manual counting or show of hands are error-prone, not compliant, and not able to guarantee the integrity of your results with the risk of eroding the trust from your shareholders.
Therefore, researching proper procedures and tools is one of primary recommendations to run a successful AGM. Technology enables you to smooth the organization of your AGM, mitigating risks and driving efficiency. Here we explain how hybrid technology can help you address the major challenges you might come across while planning your AGM.
The introduction of hybrid AGMs
The format for AGMs is evolving as companies across the world have been presented with unprecedented challenges to their modus operandi because of the pandemic. Since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, running a physical AGM was illegal in many regions around the world due to severe restrictions on face-to-face events. In the meantime, innovation and digitalisation flourished at an unprecedented pace, and regulatory requirements swiftly adapted to keep pace with these changes to allow holding AGMs in virtual or hybrid format.
Hybrid meetings have become commonplace amongst organisations of all sizes, and the importance of this trend should not be overlooked. A hybrid AGM is a crossover between a physical and a virtual one, combining the benefits of both the in-room and online experience. It allows shareholders to opt between attending in person or online and exercising their rights at the meeting from any location.
If you are considering holding your next AGM in a hybrid format, you must equip with a reliable software AGM platform to create a seamless digital experience for your attendees, streamlining key processes, such as voting of the shareholders, while enhancing transparency and security of your event.
