What is a Professional AGM (Annual General Meeting) Service.
If you have looked up the requirements to hold a legal AGM for your property in Cyprus you may be thinking, this entire process sounds like a lot of complicated work, and it can be.
There are many regulations that must be followed for the meeting to be legal, and potential serious consequences if the regulations are not followed.
If you have held numerous AGMs then you will find this is a fairly straightforward process. You will have your checklists to make sure you follow the requirements, your calculation sheets ready for quorum and voting rights, a standard agenda and notice templates. When you have all of this ready it’s simply a case of taking it step-by-step.
However, if this is your first time organising a General Meeting, or you have held them in the past but been unaware of all the legal requirements this can be a very stressful and frustrating task.
This is where professional support can help:
Using a communal property professional can take the hassle out of organising your AGM, and take the stress away by making sure all the regulatory requirements are followed. While an additional expense, it is relativly small compared to most buildings operational budgets and can be good value for money as a single mistake can invalidate the committee, votes, budgets etc. This gives problem owners ammunition to take action against the committee, or a debtor the perfect legal excuse not to pay.
If you already have a Property Manager, they may be able to offer assistance in organising the AGM, or even offer a service to handle it for you. Just be sure that they know the legal requirements and have experience in holding a General Meeting.
If you do everything in-house (self-managed), use a Property Manager for limited tasks (semi-self-managed), or your Property Manager does not offer a AGM arrangement package you can hire a Professional AGM organiser to come in purely to organise your AGM.
You will want to look for an AGM organisation service that includes the following 4 things.
1) Posting Notice
This is important to meet both the legal requirements, and to increase the attendance at your meeting. You want to aim for the highest attendance possible, as engaged owners who feel part of their building are far more understanding of the committees role and the obstacles the committee face on a day to day basis. I recently made a video on the importance of increasing attendance at your meeting which you can view here: VIDEO: Increasing-AGM-Attendance
A professional provider will be able to not only post clear notices in multiple languages on the building, make sure that these notices follow the regulatory requirements but they also have the resources to sent out multiple reminders, letters, emails and call owners to promote attendance or submission of proxy forms.
2) Calculating Quorum
There are strict regulatory requirements that must be followed for your meeting to proceed correctly. As I mentioned earlier in this article failure to follow these can have serious consequences for the committee and the general body of unit owners. one of the most common mistakes made is calculating the Quorum (the minimum number of units required to be in attendance in person or by proxy) incorrectly.
A professional AGM organiser will know these requirements inside and out, and possibly have software to make all the necessary calculations quickly and accurately. Most importantly they will know what rules you can follow to hold your meeting as required by the regulations even with low attendance at your Annual General Meetings.
3) Calculating Decisions by Voting
Similar to calculating quorum, there are also strict procedures in place for making decisions at your buildings Annual General Meeting. Failure to follow these can invalidate these decisions.
A professional AGM organiser will be aware of these requirements and have the facility to organise a meetings decisions by one of the two accepted methods.
4) Hosting the Meeting
In addition to knowing the individual steps to hold the meeting, its important to make sure your entire meeting process from the initial quorum checks, meeting and committee elections through to decision making and recording of minutes is organised smoothly, efficiently and legally. This helps increase confidence with the unit owners, and minimise the liability to the building and the committee.
A professional AGM organiser will take you step by step through the entire meeting process, following all the requirements and reducing the hassle and stress of organising this meeting from the committee. Some providers will also include services such as providing a professional venue, taking the minutes, video recording and live streaming the meeting to owners unable to attend in person.
Looking for a professional AGM service??
While there are many providers out there that offer this as a service, I cannot write this article without informing you that this is a service that I offer to both my communal management clients, and as a standalone service to building management committees who self-manage their buildings. You can view full details of this service by following this link: Professional AGM organisation services
Russell Flick
The Cyprus Communal Guide
Helping you unlock your buildings true potential.
