A virtual town hall meeting is a company event where leaders send updates to their employees through an online seminar. These are news updates about the organization’s visions, missions, goals, etc., and they aim to keep all employees in the communication loop. Such meetings are crucial to creating a company’s culture, building on its community, and establishing trust and confidence amongst employees.
While conducting a meeting on such a huge scale can seem troublesome, here are eight tips that will help you efficiently run a virtual town hall meeting.
- Choose an Appropriate Time
An appropriate time and date are crucial while conducting a town hall meeting. You must consider factors such as time zones in various countries, work priorities, official holidays, etc., to ensure maximum employee attendance.
- Let it Be a Two-Way Interaction
Let your employees become a part of the meeting. Allowing them to participate actively can help increase their morale and boost their esteem. You can do this by enabling conversations between employees and leaders, conducting quick polls, encouraging feedback within the session, etc.
- Establish an Agenda Before Hand
Creating a meeting agenda is one of the essential parts of conducting a productive town hall meeting. The leader can use the agenda to provide meaningful insights and guide members through the session.
When the participants have the agenda beforehand, they can set their expectations, jot down their questions, and clearly understand the topics being discussed.
- Hire a Moderator
For meetings with larger groups, having a moderator is essential to ensure everything stays afloat and runs smoothly. Moderators can mute or unmute participants, limit background noise, establish communication between two parties, and control backend technology. They can also start or stop presentations, remove uninvited guests, or eliminate participants for being disruptive or for not maintaining the decorum.
- Invite Multiple Speakers
Inviting multiple speakers and presenters to your town hall meeting is always a good idea. These could be managers or members from different departments or management levels. It allows you to represent multiple perspectives, create a diverse spectrum of opinions, and understand what is going on in the organization.
- Have a Leader
To run a flawless town hall meeting, appoint a person as the face of the meeting. This person is usually responsible for handling the number of participants, ensuring everything is on time, establishing an itinerary for the conference, conducting test runs, transitioning between different speakers, managing questions and feedback, and closing the meeting.
A leader works in coordination with the speakers and ensures that their content is well aligned with the outline of the meeting. They also help speakers wrap up in time.
- Celebrate Victories
One of the best ways to motivate your employees is to acknowledge their work. Be it a shout-out, an appraisal, or a certification; such acts can boost employee morale and keep them consistently active throughout the meeting. You can consider allotting a specific portion of the meeting for employee recognition. This can also be done by different management teams or by asking for peer nominations.
- Conduct a Test Run
Check all your equipment and devices before the final day. Before the big day, ensure that your video and audio are working in coordination, ensure your internet bandwidth is enough to host the call, and learn how to share the screen.
You must also conduct a mock trial by calling a few participants in advance, running the entire itinerary before them, and seeking their feedback. It will help rule out any possible technical errors or glitches.
Conclusion
Productive town hall meetings can help foster growth and development within an organization. When leaders share their areas of focus and priorities, it enables the employees to understand them better and work towards them with sheer dedication. You can make the meeting more meaningful and engaging by putting forward your message and information through pre-designed PowerPoint or Google Slides templates beautified with self-explanatory icons and comprehensible graphics.
We hope these tips help you conduct an interactive and amazing town hall meeting!
