Town Halls

Company town halls have become even more important for hybrid and remote workforces, and attendance at many companies has been up. They can help communicate the culture and keep employees in the loop on leadership’s vision and how their individual roles can support that vision. Make employees glad they invested their time by considering these tips:

Do: Make it a conversation

Ideally, a company hall is a chance for employees to interact with leadership, rather than having leadership spew information at them. Be sure to encourage employee participation, maybe by having them text questions ahead of time, or posting their questions in the chat function during the meeting. And encourage leadership to stop talking long enough to occasionally give employees the floor.

Don’t: Cram too much on slides

Help your leadership avoid the temptation of showing a PowerPoint with umpteen bullet points and a graph. Besides the likelihood that they’ll have the audience nodding off before they reach the fifth bullet, a town hall is not the place to go deep into details. Keep the conversation topline and refer them to appropriate resources for more info. Slides with fewer words can communicate more effectively.

Don’t: Have only C-level presenters

There’s no reason the CEO should do all the talking, or even other members of the C-suite. Shine a little limelight on the people a level or two down instead. For instance, if you’re featuring a new product or service line, invite someone from the team involved in the launch to speak. Employees might find it more meaningful, and more inspirational, to hear from the folks who did the work to make that launch happen.

Don’t: Be too HQ-centric

Sure, you’re streaming the company town hall so that employees around the world can see what’s going on. But when your presenters are all from the corporate headquarters office, it may not feel like a global view. If you’re discussing an expansion in India, let the managing director in Pune do the talking. If you’re a manufacturing company, maybe host the town hall in a plant and feature those essential workers.

Do: End the meeting on time

If you’ve planned the meeting for an hour, don’t let it stretch an hour plus fifteen. Be sure to show respect for employees’ time and their other calendar commitments by managing the time allotted for each speaker and keeping things moving along according to the agenda. Tone is set at the top, so make sure leadership is setting an example of good meeting etiquette and efficiency.