12 Meeting Room
Etiquette Rules

Short answer: good room etiquette comes down to three behaviours — release what you won't use, end when you said you would, and leave the room ready for the next group. The other nine rules below are details of those three. (There's a printable A4 poster at the bottom — most teams just hang that.)

Every office has these rules. Almost no office has written them down, which is why every office also has That One Recurring Argument. Write them down once, pin them by the door, done.

The 12 rules

1. The room belongs to the booking, not the booker's status. If it's 14:00 and you booked 14:00, the room is yours — even if the CEO is mid-sentence in it. (A culture where this rule holds is a culture where rooms work.)

2. Release rooms you won't use — immediately. Meeting cancelled? Cancel the room. A booked-but-empty room is the single biggest source of room scarcity. (Displays with check-in auto-release these — but the habit matters anyway.)

3. Right-size your booking. Two people don't need the 10-seat boardroom. Take the small room; leave the big one for the all-hands.

4. One person + video call = booth, not boardroom. If your office has call booths, big rooms are for 2+ people. This single rule frees more capacity than building new rooms.

5. End at :55 or :25. Book 25/55-minute defaults instead of 30/60. The 5-minute buffer is for the next group to start on time — and for you to reach your next meeting without the corridor jog.

6. Overrunning? You're now the interruption. When the next group appears at the glass, you wrap — mid-sentence if needed. "We'll take it to chat" is a complete sentence.

7. Leave it as found, or better. Whiteboard erased (photo it first), chairs back, cables coiled, mugs out. Thirty seconds of cleanup is the rent.

8. Confidential whiteboards get erased. Always. The next meeting's attendees should never learn your salary bands from the wall.

9. Don't squat in an unbooked room. Found an empty room? Book it on the spot (a door display makes this a two-tap habit) — otherwise the rightful booker arrives and the awkwardness begins.

10. Recurring bookings expire. Standing weekly bookings that "might be needed" are how rooms rot. Audit yours quarterly; release the zombies.

11. Hybrid courtesy: the room joins the call, not just the people. Whoever books a room for a hybrid meeting owns the camera/audio working before minute one.

12. The last meeting of the day turns things off. Screen off, lights off. Whoever closes the room closes the room.

Making the rules stick

Rules pinned to a wall work better than rules in a wiki, and defaults work better than both: 25/55-minute calendar defaults, auto-release on no-show, at-the-door booking so squatting becomes legitimate booking. Etiquette enforced by software doesn't need enforcing.

FAQ

Should management get booking priority? Formal priority rules breed resentment and gaming. Rule 1 plus enough rooms beats a hierarchy.

What's a fair no-show grace period? 10 minutes, then auto-release. Long enough for elevator delays, short enough to matter.

Who enforces this? The poster, the defaults, and mild peer pressure — in that order. It genuinely doesn't need a policy doc.

Print the poster, pin it by the most-fought-over room, and forward this to whoever runs your office channel. Arguments will drop within a week.