Brown Bag Session: What Is It and Can It Improve Your Productivity?

To put it simply, a brown bag session is an informal type of meeting or training session where the attendees bring their own food. Brown bag sessions are normally held during lunch hour. However, it is increasingly commonplace for companies to hold them at any hour of the day.

Quite interestingly, the term brown bag session or brown bag meeting was coined from the practice of employees bringing their lunch in brown bags. Also, since brown bag sessions frequently happen during lunchtime, many people also call them Lunch & Learn meetings.

Types Of Bown Bag Session Meetings

You’ve got four primary types of brown bag meetings:

• Social Meeting

A social brown bag meeting is the type of meeting wherein every participant socializes and gets to know one another. It’s very casual and pressure-free in nature.

By regularly conducting social brown bag meetings, you get to develop a better relationship with the people you work with. As a result, the collective output of your team tends to improve.

• Small Group Meeting

The primary goal of a small group meeting is to gain the insights of your co-workers regarding a specific topic that’s defined beforehand.

Every participant in this type of meeting is encouraged to speak their mind. After all, their ideas might solve problems or contribute to the betterment of your enterprise.

• Seminar Meeting

In seminar brown bag sessions, a guest speaker is invited to speak and share their knowledge.

After the guest speaks, there’s usually a question and answer portion of the meeting. It’s during this time that you can ask any questions as well as share any insights that you have gained.

• Combination Meeting

As its name implies, a combination meeting is a type of brown bag session that combines small group meetings with seminar meetings. Such meetings are usually set to address problems.

Often, after the guest speaker leaves, the rest of your team gets together. Following that, all the insights and ideas that come about during the meeting get shared.

Brown Bag Session Benefits

Below are the benefits of conducting brown bag sessions:

• Inspire Teamwork

A brown bag meeting inspires teamwork. It drives collaboration by inspiring everyone to work together to solve problems or come up with creative ideas. On top of that, it encourages everyone in your team to do their absolute best at the tasks they are allotted to do.

• Increase Morale

Work can be very draining in both a physical and mental way. As a result, it’s easy to lose your morale while you’re on the job, especially if you doing the same thing every single day.

Fortunately, a brown bag session can boost your morale and that of your teammates. Besides that, it also provides temporary relief and a breath of fresh air for all the people you work with.

• Get To Know Each Other

The easy-going atmosphere of brown bag sessions makes it easier for your team to get to know each other on a more personal level. 

If anything, this is great because a team with camaraderie is likelier to produce better results and attain success in all of their endeavors.

• Exchange Ideas

For any endeavor to succeed, it’s vital to freely exchange ideas with your teammates to create a strategy that’s streamlined and effective. 

As mentioned, brown bag meetings produce an easy-going atmosphere which makes people more open to sharing their opinions and ideas.

• Strengthen Your Team’s Values And Mission

A team must be a cohesive unit where every member works in sync with each other. Regularly having brown bag meetings will help remind everyone of your team’s values and ultimate mission. Consequently, it shall become much harder to fall astray and end up failing.

Frequent Topics During Brown Bag Sessions