People all over the world are being forced to meet virtually due to home working and social-distancing.

Now specialist wellness PR firm, S’well, has created a free online toolkit to help enhance virtual meetings using a ‘best practices protocol’ to facilitate more effective, healthier online meetings.

Called The Virtually Well Meeting Recipe Book, the toolkit draws on six pillars: leadership and planning, live scribing, music performance, mindfulness practices, movement and technology that works.

“Unfortunately, remote meetings tend to compound all the problems of real-world meetings,” says S’Well co-founder, Kim Marshall.

“The biggest issue in a virtual meeting is that participants become passive, disengaged, and multi-task, letting the ‘Big Dogs’ have their run of the meeting,” she said, “now more than ever businesses need meetings that enhance effectiveness with an all-mindful-hands-on deck approach.”

The webinar involves advice on how to make meetings more productive. Tips help participants remain engaged with techniques such as intermittent mindfulness practices, using live scribing and movement exercises .

In addition, they suggest using colourful mind maps to help keep track of people’s contributions and advise enriching virtual meetings with live music breaks – proven to improve brain performance and communication and strengthen the immune system.

Marshall and S’well co-founder, Darlene Fiske, launched the toolkit on 2 April via a webinar, where the firm’s approaches were revealed with the help of industry figures who illustrated the ‘methods’.

These included mindfulness specialist Katie Hess, musician David Victor, movement specialist Lisa Fasullo and graphic facilitator Peggy Wynne Borgman.

The webinar also includes tips to enhance meetings, such as silencing mobile devices, having a moderator to ensure the agenda is followed and using powerpoint to guide talks.

For more information and access to the webinar, visit the S’well PR website.