presentation for town hall meeting

Company town hall meeting presentation: A comprehensive guide

Everything you need to know about planning and executing a successful company town hall meeting presentation.

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Welcome to the ultimate guide on how to create and deliver an impactful company town hall meeting presentation.

In today's corporate landscape, effective communication is paramount, and town hall meetings serve as a vital platform for fostering engagement, sharing key updates, and aligning the entire company with its goals. Whether you're a seasoned presenter or new to the world of town hall meetings, this guide will equip you with the expertise you need to shine in this crucial role.

What are company town hall meetings?

Town hall meetings are the cornerstone of transparent and open communication within an organization. These gatherings bring together team members from different levels of the company to discuss important topics, share key updates, and foster a sense of community.

Why are town hall meetings so important for an organization?

Company town hall meetings serve a variety of essential purposes, making them a vital element of a successful corporate communication strategy. Here are some compelling reasons why town hall meetings matter:

• Employee engagement : Town hall meetings provide a platform to engage employees at all levels, from the leadership team to front-line staff. When employees feel heard and valued, their engagement levels soar.
• Alignment with company goals : These meetings ensure that every member of the organization is on the same page regarding company goals, strategies, and priorities. It's an opportunity to connect the dots between individual roles and the larger mission.
• Building a sense of belonging : Town hall meetings foster a sense of belonging and community within the organization. They help employees feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves.
• Transparency and open forum : These meetings encourage open and transparent communication. Team members can ask questions and address issues directly with senior leadership, creating a culture of openness.
• Sharing important updates : Town hall meetings are the perfect platform for sharing key updates, whether they concern business results, company goals, or personal news like client wins and team achievements.

Key elements of a successful town hall meeting

To create a truly effective town hall meeting presentation, it's crucial to understand the key elements that contribute to its success:

• Clear agenda : Start by creating an agenda for your town hall meeting. Define the topics you'll cover and allocate time for each. A well-structured agenda keeps the meeting on track.
• Engaging presentation slides : Presentation slides are your visual aids. Use them to reinforce your message and keep the audience engaged. Consider using tools like Prezent or Google Slides to enhance your visuals.
• Interactive Q&A session : A live Q&A session allows team members to ask questions and seek clarifications. It's an opportunity to address difficult questions and build trust.
• Icebreaker activities : Incorporating icebreaker activities at the beginning of the meeting can help break the ice and create a relaxed atmosphere, especially in in-person meetings.
• Meeting notes : Provide meeting notes or a summary afterward to ensure that everyone is on the same page. This documentation also helps those who couldn't attend the meeting in person.

How to Structure an effective town hall meeting presentation

A well-structured presentation is essential for conveying information, engaging your audience, and fostering open communication during a town hall meeting. Here are the key steps to follow:

1. Define Your Objectives:

‍ Begin by clarifying the main goals of your town hall meeting. What do you want to achieve with this presentation? Understanding your objectives will help you tailor your content and structure accordingly.

2. Audience Analysis:

‍ Know your audience. Consider the demographics, interests, and concerns of the people attending the meeting. Tailor your content to resonate with them.

3. Opening Statement:

‍ Start with a strong and engaging opening statement. Capture your audience's attention by addressing the importance of the meeting and its relevance to the community or organization.

4. Agenda Overview:

‍ Provide a brief overview of what you will cover during the presentation. This helps the audience understand the flow and purpose of the meeting.

5. Main Content Sections:

‍ Structure the main body of your presentation into distinct sections, each addressing a specific topic or issue. Use clear headings to guide the audience. For each section:

a. Introduction: Briefly introduce the topic and why it's important.

b. Key Points: Present the main points or information related to the topic.

c. Visual Aids: Use visuals like charts, graphs, and images to support your points.

d. Examples: Provide real-life examples or case studies to illustrate key concepts.

e. Data and Statistics: Back up your claims with data or statistics if applicable.

f. Engagement: Encourage audience participation with questions or polls related to the topic.

g. Q&A Opportunities: Allow time for questions after each section.

6. Transition Slides:

‍ Use transition slides between sections to smoothly move from one topic to the next. This can include a brief summary of what was covered and a preview of what's coming up.

7. Interactive Elements:

‍ Incorporate interactive elements such as open discussions, surveys, or live polls to engage the audience and gather their input.

8. Visual Design:

‍ Pay attention to the visual design of your presentation. Use clear and readable fonts, consistent colors, and uncluttered slides. Visual consistency helps maintain the audience's focus.

9. Storytelling:

‍ Use storytelling techniques to make your presentation relatable and memorable. Share personal anecdotes, success stories, or examples that connect with the audience.

10. Call to Action:

‍ Conclude your presentation with a clear call to action. What do you want the audience to do or think after the meeting? Make it specific and actionable.

11. Q&A Session:

‍ Reserve time for a dedicated question and answer session. Address any concerns, doubts, or queries from the audience. Be prepared to answer questions effectively.

12. Closing Remarks:

‍ Summarize the key takeaways from the meeting and thank the audience for their participation. Reiterate the importance of the topics discussed.

13. Feedback Collection:

‍ Encourage attendees to provide feedback on the meeting. This can help you improve future presentations.

14. Follow-Up Actions:

‍ Communicate any follow-up actions or next steps after the town hall meeting. This ensures that the discussion leads to concrete results.

15. Handouts and Resources:

‍ Provide handouts or links to additional resources for those who want to explore the topics in more depth.

16. Practice and Rehearse:

‍ Practice your presentation multiple times to ensure a smooth and confident delivery. Rehearsing also helps you fine-tune the timing and flow.

17. Timing:

‍ Be mindful of the allotted time for the town hall meeting and ensure that your presentation fits within the schedule.

18. Engage and Connect:

‍ Throughout the presentation, maintain eye contact, use a confident and friendly tone, and actively engage with the audience. Foster a sense of connection and inclusivity.

By following this structured approach, you can create an effective town hall meeting presentation that informs, engages, and motivates your audience, leading to productive discussions and positive outcomes.

Do’s and don'ts on a town hall meeting presentation

To ensure your town hall meeting presentation is a resounding success, here are some do’s and don'ts to keep in mind:

• Do engage with the audience and encourage participation.
• Do use impactful visuals and well-designed slides to convey your message.
• Do maintain a positive and professional tone throughout the presentation.
• Do follow up with meeting notes and action items.

Don'ts:

• Don't go off-topic or overrun your allotted time.
• Don't use jargon or technical language that may confuse the audience.
• Don't neglect the importance of preparation and practice.
• Don't dismiss or evade difficult questions; address them openly.
• Don't forget to foster a sense of community and belonging.

Summarizing key takeaways

In conclusion, company town hall meetings play a pivotal role in nurturing a culture of transparency, engagement, and alignment within an organization. When conducted effectively, they can strengthen employee morale, boost company performance, and enhance overall business results.

Whether your town hall meetings are in-person or conducted virtually across different time zones, the principles of effective communication remain the same. Remember, it's not just about the content you present but also about how you engage your employees and build a sense of community.

1. What is the purpose of a town hall meeting, and how does it fit into our company's strategy?

Town hall meetings serve as a platform for all-hands gatherings, where the entire company, including remote employees, can connect virtually. These meetings align with the company's strategy by fostering internal communications, sharing updates on business goals, and reinforcing corporate culture.

2. How can I improve my presentation skills for our next town hall event?

To make the best use of your time during every town hall meetings, consider practicing your presentation skills. Senior leadership teams often present at these events, so it's essential to connect with employees effectively, whether in-person or during an online town hall meeting.

3. Why is it important to set a clear agenda item for each town hall meeting?

Setting a clear agenda item for every town hall is crucial to address the issues that matter most to employees across the organization. It helps companies focus on relevant topics and add value to the discussions, whether it's about remote working, business goals, or addressing specific concerns.

4. How can we ensure that employees who can't attend in real-time stay informed about the town hall content?

For a hybrid event or when employees can't attend in real-time, consider recording the meeting and making it accessible on the company's intranet. This approach allows employees to catch up on the content and chat with people who were present at the meeting.

5. What's the role of upper management in town hall meetings, and how do they connect with employees across different teams and functions?

Upper management plays a significant role in town hall meetings by addressing the company's business goals and fostering corporate culture. To connect with employees effectively, senior managers should use these gatherings to communicate with cross-functional teams, gather feedback, and address important issues such as remote working and management and employees' concerns.

Read more about company culture presentation

Create your town hall meeting presentation with Prezent

Prezent, as an AI presentation software tailored for enterprise teams, offers valuable support for crafting your town hall meeting presentation. With its vast library of slides, brand-approved designs, and customizable templates, Prezent streamlines the content creation process, saving you time and ensuring brand consistency.

Additionally, it considers audience preferences, facilitates real-time collaboration, and ensures compliance, all while reducing communication costs. If you're on a tight schedule, Prezent's overnight presentation service can deliver a polished presentation by the next business day, helping you prepare effectively for your town hall meeting.

So, whether you need to deliver an in-person meeting or host a virtual town hall, Prezent has you covered. Get started today and take your town hall presentations to the next level!

Sign up for our free trial or book a demo ! ‍

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Resources: Blog | Polly

How to Host Engaging and Impactful Town Hall Meetings

A town hall meeting can bring your teams together and offer a chance to give key announcements and ask for input. Don’t leave out these five components.

The best town hall meetings engage, inspire, and rally people to support your corporate culture and goals. Town hall meetings represent one of the best ways to bring everyone together to share news, talk business, and build relationships . 

Let’s take a closer look at town hall meetings to discover what they are, why they matter, and how to host town hall meetings that really engage your employees.

What is a town hall meeting?

A town hall meeting is the perfect way to bring people together, talk about what’s important, and get feedback on what’s working and what could be better. Town halls are a regularly scheduled, super accessible way for employees and senior leadership to meet and engage. 

Town hall meetings, also known as “all-hands” meetings, are gatherings where the team can hear news, discuss challenges, stay informed, and offer ideas. They’re a time to discuss important topics and engage and build relationships with people you may not work closely with. While they may be open to the public, they aren’t usually public meetings. Host them in your HQ office if you can, or turn to an online town hall meeting for your remote or hybrid team. 

Note: If you have team members in many different time zones, try to find a time that’ll work for everyone. If that isn’t possible, share a recording of the meeting, and ask everyone to watch it by the end of the next business day.

5 benefits of hosting a town hall event

Town hall meetings help you connect with everyone in your company. Here are some of the main benefits of hosting town hall meetings:

1. Share information easily

A company wide email, Slack announcement, or virtual chat update in Microsoft Teams is great for topics that are easy to understand and won’t cause much worry. But when you share complex information, it can be worth doing so through an all-hands meeting. With everyone present at the meeting, it’s a great way to announce anything from company strategy to a new Diversity and Inclusion initiative. 

2. Bring teams together

Town hall meetings are just as much a social gathering as a work meeting. They’re an opportunity to get to know not just teams but individuals too. Make time to recognize both teams and individuals as you let the company know what they’ve been up to. Seek to unite teams behind projects, company initiatives, and performance goals whether you’re meeting in person or over a video call.

3. Create opportunities for discussion and feedback

Employee engagement remains a key priority for thoughtful business leaders, and town hall meetings give you a space for discussion and feedback. Give people a chance to get involved and share their thoughts to ramp up engagement. 

4. Strengthen your company culture

Your town hall meeting will naturally reflect your company culture, as you set the tone, agenda, and overall atmosphere. Use your meetings as a chance to build trust, reinforce your company culture, and show what it means to be part of your community. Town hall meetings are also an ideal opportunity to share some of your energy and enthusiasm for the company and what you do. Feel free to take a few minutes each meeting to really speak from the heart in this way.  You can really drive the energy forward and lead with passion in a way that’s harder to do by email.

5. Give direct access to your leadership team

Getting in touch with a senior manager can be tough, even if you have their contact information on the digital directory. After all, this person is often busy, and you might be intimidated by their position. 

Your town hall meeting is an easy way for people to get face-to-face interaction with your CEO or senior leadership team. This direct access breaks down barriers, builds relationships, and improves transparency.

What to include at your town hall meeting.

Unlike a team meeting, town halls typically involve the whole company. 

Town hall meetings are often a catch-all for company updates, project details, award wins, personal news, and HR updates. The flexible structure of a town hall doesn’t mean a lack of structure though, and the best town hall meetings are the ones where everyone knows what the plan is. 

Here’s how to structure your town hall meeting for success. 

1. A warm welcome

Start your all-hands meeting with a warm welcome. Whether you host a town hall every week or every month, it’s important to set the tone with a lively greeting and a friendly face. 

Welcome everyone and thank them for joining. Give everyone time to chat with people near them or split people into random breakout rooms and give them an icebreaker. At an in-person meeting, you might also have extra buffer time between your welcome and kicking things off to give people time to settle. With a virtual meeting, encourage conversation by greeting people as they join or asking an icebreaker question.

2. A clear agenda with rough timings

You might have something new to talk about at every town hall meeting, so set a clear agenda that gives everyone a structure to follow. Share this before the meeting so there are no major surprises for your team — unless they’re positive. 

Your agenda should be easy to read and concise. It should include estimates of when you’ll address each agenda item. Use a similar template every time so people understand that you normally share a corporate update after a project update and that there’s always time at the end to bring up any other business.

3. Key company and project updates

One of the main purposes of a town hall meeting is to share information with the whole company at once. They’re a great way to celebrate a big client win, update your teams on a cross-company initiative, or discuss topics like benefits and stipends. When everyone knows what’s going on, you create new opportunities for cross-functional collaborations that can have a hugely positive impact right across the business.

Some examples of town hall meeting announcements include:

• Company growth 
• Financial updates 
• Opportunities
• New hires and departures
• Improvements

Come to the meeting prepared with key updates, and be ready to answer questions. Take 5-10 minutes to share relevant key highlights with your team, and share additional details later in your meeting notes. 

4. Personal news 

Town hall meetings aren’t just for business. With everyone gathered together in one place, they’re also a good place to share any personal news that your teammates should know about. 

Expect to see this space used for positive updates like pregnancy or adoption announcements, engagement and wedding announcements, and heads up on major vacations, sabbaticals, or learning opportunities. 

People might also use this space to share sad news or ask for support or space through a difficult time. It’s important to let everyone know you’re there for them, whether it’s good news or bad. 

In general, creating space in your town hall meeting for employees’ personal updates shows you’re interested in their lives.

5. Comments and frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Unlike other company meetings, town hall meetings create an opportunity for discussion and engagement. It’s not a hierarchical meeting — it’s a more balanced environment that creates room for connection. 

All-hands meetings typically end with space for questions, comments, challenges, and feedback from team members. You can choose to take questions throughout the meeting or if you’d prefer to save them all for this agenda item. 

Open the floor to hear team questions, concerns, or ideas about how to improve the company environment.

Note: While people might use this opportunity to raise a personal gripe, as the moderator, what really matters is how you handle it. After all, the problem means enough for them to publicly mention it. If you encounter any challenging remarks or questions that are just too difficult to handle on the spot, let everyone know you’ll come back to them in a certain timeframe.

4 ways to make your town hall meetings even better

Now that we all understand why town hall meetings are an amazing addition to the schedule, here’s how to make them even better.  With Polly’s Slack and Microsoft Teams integrations, you can use polls and questions to help plan, run, improve, and add value to your all-hands meetings. 

1. Plan your town hall meeting agenda collaboratively 

Even though a manager usually sets the agenda for your town hall event, you might want to ask your team to add updates about projects, personal news, or “any other business” sections. If that’s the case, use our all-hands meeting prep template to gather ideas and suggestions. You can use this feedback to refine your agenda before the meeting. 

2. Kick things off with an icebreaker

Your all-hands meeting doesn’t have to be super serious. Add a little fun to your virtual town hall meeting over Zoom with our icebreakers . Set a thoughtful or lighthearted question, and listen as the answers come in from your team members. If it makes sense, split everyone into small groups so everyone can participate within the time you’ve allotted.

3. Capture instant feedback with in-meeting polls 

The beauty of adding technology to your town hall meeting is you can get instant feedback. If you’re hosting an in-person or hybrid event where people are at their desks, or a virtual all-hands meeting, use our instant engagement tools to get quick feedback about your meeting. Ask for opinions on topics, votes for or against ideas, or for a virtual show of hands for volunteers on a new initiative. 

4. Improve future meetings with after-meeting feedback

It’s hard to know what people thought about your meeting and announcements if you don’t ask. Use our all-hands feedback template to get a feel for how the meeting went and what would make it better in the future. You can automate this whole process and schedule a polly to go out after every town hall meeting.

Looking for even more ideas to improve your town hall meetings? Take a look at our best tips on how to make your next all-hands meeting a success . 

Host engaging town hall meetings with Polly

To recap, town hall meetings are a valuable addition to any company’s schedule. They’re an ideal way to connect with everyone, share news and updates, and ramp up your employee engagement. 

If you’re ready to take your town hall meetings to the next level, add Polly to your tech stack. Discover an easier way to ask for agenda topics, gauge feedback in real time, and get suggestions for future meetings. Create an even better experience for your coworkers and transform your all-hands meetings today — try Polly for free .

Level up your next all-hands, try Polly for free today

Written by Nicola Scoon

Nicola Scoon is a freelance writer that's passionate about employee engagement and better workplace experiences. She draws on her experience in internal communications to help companies create content that empowers, encourages, and motivates people to create better experiences for all.

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What Is A Town Hall Meeting: How to Conducting Effective Town Hall Meetings

About the author

Jill Romford

Feb 23,2024 - Last update: Feb 23,2024

Town hall meetings can be adapted to the unique needs of a company. In smaller organizations, they might manifest as casual lunches with team members or informal get-togethers. Conversely, larger corporations may opt for more formalized events, featuring presentations and interactive discussions led by top-level managers or executives. 

Regardless of the format, the essence lies in creating an open forum that nurtures transparency, engagement, and a sense of collective purpose within the company.

In this blog article, we explore the concept of  What Is A Town Hall Meeting   and delve into the effective ways of conducting them. The focus is on understanding what a town hall meeting entails and providing insights into the best practices for ensuring their efficiency. The article aims to guide readers on the principles and methods involved in organizing and executing successful town hall meetings. 

From defining the essence of a town hall meeting to offering practical tips on conducting them with effectiveness, this piece serves as a valuable resource for individuals seeking to enhance their skills in managing and participating in these communal gatherings.  

Town hall meeting examples?

Town hall meetings are versatile forums that can cover various topics and address diverse concerns within an organization. 

Here are a few examples of town hall meetings and their respective purposes:

• Company Updates and Strategy Discussion:  Purpose: Share important updates about the company's performance, future goals, and strategic direction. Agenda: Overview of financial performance, upcoming projects, and long-term strategies. Q&A session for employees to seek clarification.
• Introduction of New Leadership:  Purpose: Introduce new executives or leaders to the organization and allow employees to connect with them. Agenda: Brief biographies of new leaders, their vision for the company, and an interactive session for employees to ask questions.
• Employee Recognition and Awards:  Purpose: Acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of employees, teams, or departments.Agenda: Presentation of awards, recognition of outstanding achievements, and expressions of gratitude. Open floor for employees to share success stories.
• Diversity and Inclusion Town Hall:  Purpose: Discuss diversity and inclusion initiatives, address concerns, and promote an inclusive workplace culture. Agenda: Presentation on diversity programs, inclusion efforts, and steps taken to create an equitable environment. Open discussion on diversity-related topics.
• Wellness and Benefits Overview:  Purpose: Inform employees about wellness programs, benefits, and initiatives to support their health and well-being. Agenda: Presentation on available benefits, upcoming wellness events, and resources for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Q&A for employees seeking more information.
• Project Kickoff and Updates:  Purpose: Launch a new project or provide updates on ongoing initiatives to keep the team informed and aligned. Agenda: Overview of the project, goals, milestones, and progress updates. Opportunities for team members to provide input and ask questions.
• Town Hall on Remote Work Policies:  Purpose: Discuss and clarify policies related to remote work, especially in a hybrid work environment. Agenda: Presentation on remote work policies, technology support, and expectations. Q&A session to address concerns and gather feedback.
• Town Hall for Organizational Changes:  Purpose: Communicate changes in organizational structure, leadership, or processes. Agenda: Explanation of the changes, reasons behind them, and how they will impact employees. Open forum for employees to share their thoughts and concerns.

These examples illustrate the versatility of town hall meetings in addressing a wide range of topics, fostering transparency, and promoting open communication within an organization.

Why do businesses have Town hall meetings?

Town hall meetings are a common practice in businesses, serving as a crucial communication platform that fosters transparency and open dialogue between leadership and employees. 

One primary purpose of these meetings is to disseminate important information about the company's performance, goals, and strategic initiatives. By bringing everyone together, leadership can ensure that the entire workforce receives consistent and accurate information, aligning employees with the organization's vision and objectives. This transparency helps build trust and a sense of belonging among employees, as they feel included in the decision-making processes that shape the company's direction.

So, town hall meetings provide an opportunity for employees to ask questions, seek clarification, and express their concerns directly to leadership. This two-way communication is essential for maintaining a healthy and engaged workforce. It allows employees to feel heard and valued, promoting a sense of ownership in the organization's success. 

So, addressing queries and concerns in a public forum helps dispel rumors and ensures that everyone has a clear understanding of the company's current state and future plans.

Another crucial aspect of town hall meetings is the promotion of a unified corporate culture. These gatherings provide a platform for recognizing and celebrating achievements, milestones, and outstanding employee contributions. By publicly acknowledging and appreciating the efforts of individuals or teams, town hall meetings contribute to a positive work environment and motivate employees to continue striving for excellence. 

So in a nutshell, town hall meetings play a vital role in shaping a company's culture, fostering communication, and building a cohesive and informed workforce.

Check out: Top 6 AI-Powered Project Management Tools To Use In 2023 ​

What is the difference between All-hands versus town hall meeting? 

The terms "all-hands meeting" and "town hall meeting" are often used interchangeably, but there are subtle differences in their connotations and usage within the business context. An "all-hands meeting" typically refers to a gathering that involves the entire workforce of a company, regardless of their hierarchical level or department. The primary goal is to bring together every employee, providing a platform for leadership to share important information, updates, and strategic initiatives directly with the entire organization. All-hands meetings focus on fostering a sense of unity and inclusivity, ensuring that everyone, from entry-level employees to top executives, is present and engaged. On the other hand, a "town hall meeting" is a broader term that can extend beyond the corporate setting. While it is commonly used in business, it can also be applied in various contexts, such as politics or community organizations. In a business context, a town hall meeting typically involves employees gathering to discuss various topics, ask questions, and provide feedback to leadership. 

The format is often more interactive, allowing for a two-way communication flow between employees and management. Town hall meetings may also feature presentations from different departments and encourage open dialogue on a range of issues. So in summary, while both terms generally refer to large gatherings involving the entire workforce, the distinction lies in the emphasis and context. "All-hands meeting" emphasizes inclusivity and unity within the organization, while "town hall meeting" carries a broader connotation, suggesting a more interactive and open forum for discussion and feedback.

What is the format of a town hall meeting?

​ The format of a town hall meeting can vary depending on the organization, its objectives, and the specific topics to be addressed. However, a typical town hall meeting often follows a structured format to ensure effective communication and engagement. Here's a general outline:

Opening Remarks:

• Welcome and introduction by the facilitator or moderator.
• Overview of the purpose and agenda for the town hall meeting.

Leadership Address:

• Presentation or address by senior leadership, often by the CEO or other executives.
• Sharing key updates, strategic initiatives, or important information with the entire workforce.

Departmental Presentations:

• Re presentatives from different departments may give brief presentations on their recent activities, achievements, or upcoming projects.
• Thi s provides a well-rounded view of the organization's functions and contributions from various teams.

Q&A Session:

• Open floor for employees to ask questions or share concerns.
• Questions may be submitted in advance or taken live during the meeting.
• Responses provided by leadership or subject matter experts.

Employee Recognition:

• Acknowledgment of employee achievements or milestones.
• Recognizing outstanding performance or contributions.

Interactive Activities:

• Engaging activities to promote team-building, collaboration, or feedback.
• This could include polls, surveys, or small group discussions.

Closing Remarks:

• Summary of key points discussed during the meeting.
• Expression of gratitude for employee participation and contributions.
• Information about future town hall meetings or avenues for ongoing communication.
• Communication about how questions or concerns raised during the meeting will be addressed.
• Distribution of meeting highlights or key takeaways.
• Encouragement for ongoing feedback and communication.

It's important to note that the format can be adapted based on the organization's culture, size, and specific goals for the town hall meeting. The key is to create an environment that encourages open communication, engagement, and collaboration among employees and leadership.

5 Reasons why town hall meetings are important

• Community Engagement and Participation:  Town hall meetings provide a platform for community members to actively engage in local governance and express their opinions. This fosters a sense of involvement and empowerment among residents, encouraging them to actively participate in shaping the future of their town or community.
• Transparent Governance:  Holding town hall meetings promotes transparency in governance. It allows local leaders to communicate directly with constituents, sharing information about current policies, upcoming projects, and addressing concerns. This open communication helps build trust between the community and their elected representatives.
• Problem Solving and Decision Making:  Town hall meetings serve as a forum for identifying and addressing community issues. Residents can voice their concerns, and local leaders can gather valuable feedback. This exchange of ideas aids in collaborative problem-solving and assists decision-makers in making informed choices that align with the needs and preferences of the community.
• Social Cohesion:  Regular town hall meetings contribute to the development of a strong sense of community. By bringing people together, residents can better understand each other's perspectives, fostering a more cohesive and supportive social environment.
• Educating the Public:  Town hall meetings provide an opportunity to educate the public on various issues, policies, and initiatives. This helps community members stay informed and enables them to make well-informed decisions about local matters.
• Accountability of Leaders:  The public forum of town hall meetings ensures that elected officials and leaders are held accountable for their actions and decisions. Citizens can directly question leaders about their policies and decisions, promoting accountability and responsiveness in local governance.
• Accessibility and Inclusivity:  Town hall meetings create an accessible space for all members of the community to participate, regardless of socio-economic status or background. This inclusivity ensures that diverse voices are heard and considered in the decision-making process.
• Promoting Civic Responsibility:  By actively participating in town hall meetings, individuals develop a sense of civic responsibility. This involvement in local governance encourages a broader understanding of democracy and fosters a culture where citizens take an active role in shaping their community.

These reasons collectively highlight the multifaceted importance of town hall meetings in promoting democracy, community engagement, and effective local governance

Key Questions for a Town Hall Meeting

• Executives may face inquiries about new initiatives within the organization and the potential impact on the workforce. Employees are keen to understand the strategic direction the company is taking and how these changes will shape the future. Providing a comprehensive overview of these initiatives, along with the associated benefits and challenges, can help align the entire team towards common objectives.
• Another key area of interest is upcoming changes within specific departments. Employees want to know about impending shifts, restructurings, or expansions and the measures being taken to prepare the workforce. Offering insights into the rationale behind these changes and the support mechanisms in place demonstrates a commitment to transparency and employee well-being.
• Employee benefits and perks often spark curiosity during town hall meetings. Whether it's health benefits, professional development opportunities, or other workplace incentives, employees seek clarity on the value proposition offered by the organization. Leaders should be prepared to articulate the company's commitment to employee well-being and growth.
• The evolving nature of workstyles, especially in the era of remote and hybrid work, is a pertinent topic. Employees may inquire about the company's stance on these arrangements and how it plans to accommodate diverse working preferences. Clear communication on policies and initiatives related to remote work fosters a sense of inclusivity and adaptability within the workforce.
• Company values play a crucial role in shaping the organizational culture. Employees may seek to understand how these values are actively applied in day-to-day operations. Leaders should highlight examples of how the company's core principles guide decision-making, collaboration, and overall workplace behavior.
• Changes in management can also raise questions during town hall meetings. Employees may seek updates on recent shifts in leadership and the potential implications for the organization. Providing insights into the reasons behind management changes and the envisioned positive outcomes can help alleviate concerns and build confidence.
• Lastly, progress updates on recent projects showcase the organization's commitment to transparency and accountability. Addressing questions related to project milestones, challenges faced, and future plans demonstrates a proactive approach to keeping employees informed and engaged.

Town hall meetings serve as invaluable opportunities for open communication and alignment within an organization. Being well-prepared to address common questions in these forums is a strategic imperative for fostering a culture of trust, collaboration, and shared success.  

8 Ways to How to lead a town hall meeting?

  Leading a town hall meeting effectively requires a combination of strong leadership, communication skills, and a genuine connection with the audience. 

Here's a guide to help you navigate and lead a successful town hall meeting:

• Preparation is Key: Begin by thoroughly preparing for the town hall meeting. Understand the agenda, know your audience, and anticipate potential questions or concerns. This preparation will instill confidence in your leadership and help you respond effectively.
• Clear Communication: Communicate with clarity and simplicity. Avoid jargon and use language that everyone can understand. Clearly articulate the purpose of the meeting and the topics to be discussed. Be transparent about any challenges or changes within the organization.
• Engage the Audience: Encourage active participation from the audience. Create an open and inclusive atmosphere where individuals feel comfortable expressing their thoughts. Field questions, listen actively, and respond thoughtfully. Acknowledge diverse perspectives and foster a sense of community.
• Address Key Topics: Cover the key topics relevant to the audience, such as new initiatives, upcoming changes, and progress updates. Provide context for each topic, explaining the rationale behind decisions and actions. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and understands the direction of the organization.
• Be Authentic: Authenticity builds trust. Share your own thoughts and experiences, and be genuine in your communication. Authentic leadership fosters a connection with the audience and helps build a positive organizational culture.
• Utilize Visual Aids: Enhance your communication with visual aids, such as slides or charts, to illustrate key points. Visual elements can simplify complex information and make the content more accessible to the audience.
• Manage Time Effectively: Respect the audience's time by adhering to the schedule. Be mindful of the duration of the meeting and allocate sufficient time for questions and discussions. Efficient time management demonstrates organizational skills and reinforces professionalism.
• Follow-Up: Conclude the town hall meeting by summarizing key points and addressing any outstanding concerns. Additionally, provide avenues for further communication, such as feedback channels or follow-up sessions. This demonstrates a commitment to ongoing dialogue and collaboration.

By incorporating these strategies, you can lead a town hall meeting that engages, informs, and builds a positive and collaborative organizational culture.

How Can you hold a town hall meeting on AgilityPortal?

The utilization of AgilityPortal and video calls has become increasingly prevalent, particularly with the surge in remote working. 

Incorporating these platforms into town hall meetings has become a standard practice. The logistical challenges of assembling everyone in a physical location, especially amidst the rise of remote work, have made virtual town hall meetings a practical and inclusive alternative.

AgilityPortal, coupled with video conferencing capabilities, provides a comprehensive solution for conducting town hall meetings in the virtual space. The platform's agility lies in its versatility, making it an ideal tool to foster seamless communication and engagement across diverse teams. 

Here's how Agility Portal can be effectively employed for town hall meetings:

• Accessibility and Inclusivity:  AgilityPortal facilitates accessibility, ensuring that all team members, regardless of their geographical location, can participate in town hall meetings. This inclusivity is crucial for organizations with dispersed teams or those embracing remote work.
• Real-time Interaction:  The platform's video call feature enables real-time interaction during town hall meetings. This feature is invaluable for fostering engagement, as it allows participants to ask questions, provide feedback, and actively participate in discussions, creating an immersive and collaborative virtual experience.
• Document and Resource Sharing:  AgilityPortal's capabilities extend beyond video calls to document and resource sharing. This feature is instrumental for distributing important information, such as presentation slides, project updates, and relevant documents, ensuring that all participants have access to the same information simultaneously.
• Enhanced Security and Control:  Security is a paramount concern in virtual meetings, and AgilityPortal addresses this with robust security features. The platform provides control over meeting access, ensuring that only authorized individuals can participate, safeguarding sensitive organizational information.
• Recording and Playback:  AgilityPortal allows town hall meetings to be recorded, offering the advantage of playback for those unable to attend in real-time. This feature enhances accessibility and ensures that all team members have the opportunity to catch up on important discussions and updates.
• Seamless Integration with Collaboration Tools:  The platform seamlessly integrates with various collaboration tools, enhancing the overall efficiency of virtual town hall meetings. Integration with calendars, messaging apps, and project management tools streamlines communication and coordination before, during, and after the meeting.
• Analytics and Feedback Mechanisms:  AgilityPortal provides analytics on meeting engagement and attendance, offering valuable insights into the effectiveness of town hall meetings. Additionally, feedback mechanisms allow participants to share their thoughts, contributing to continuous improvement in virtual communication strategies.

In conclusion, the integration of AgilityPortal for town hall meetings aligns with the evolving dynamics of remote work and distributed teams. 

Its features not only address the logistical challenges posed by physical gatherings but also enhance the overall effectiveness, inclusivity, and engagement levels of virtual town hall meetings. Embracing these technological solutions ensures that organizations can navigate the changing landscape of work with agility and resilience.

Wrapping up

Furthermore, the interactive nature of town hall meetings fosters a sense of community and connection among employees. 

Beyond being a platform for information dissemination, these gatherings provide a forum for open dialogue and constructive feedback. By actively involving employees in discussions, companies not only demonstrate a commitment to transparency but also empower their workforce to contribute ideas and perspectives. 

This participatory approach contributes to a positive work culture, where employees feel valued, acknowledged, and an integral part of the decision-making process. Ultimately, the reciprocal communication established in town hall meetings contributes to a more engaged, motivated, and satisfied workforce. 

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Your quick guide to effective town hall meetings (Incl. Template)

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• What is a town hall meeting?

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Wed, Jun 14, '23  

What is a town hall meeting? 

A town hall meeting is a regular event that involves all of an organization’s employees. They allow employees to learn about any new initiatives the company is launching, and discuss any challenges it’s facing. They’re also a chance for employees of all seniority levels to ask questions and provide feedback to the company’s leadership team. 

When it’s done right, a town hall meeting shouldn’t be a long, dry presentation that employees are forced to sit through. It should be an engaging, two-way conversation that provides value to both leaders and employees. 

Here are some of the benefits of hosting regular town hall meetings: 

• Keeps everyone informed about important company updates: From the latest sales figures to new product launches to news about mergers and acquisitions, a town hall meeting is the perfect way to keep everyone informed about your company’s activities. 
• Brings different teams and employees together: Most people spend most of their time at work speaking to the same handful of colleagues. A town hall meeting is a great opportunity for employees to meet other people within your organization. 
• Provides an opportunity for feedback and clarification: Your employees likely have questions about your company’s strategy and ideas to improve operations — and a town hall meeting gives them the chance to share these with everyone. 
• Gives employees access to your leadership team: Most employees don’t get to speak to (or even see) their company’s leaders, especially in large or remote organizations. Town hall meetings provide an opportunity for employees to get to know their leaders and ask them questions.  
• Builds company culture and boosts morale: A town hall meeting is a great way to remind your employees that you’re all working together towards a common goal. This can improve engagement and help employees to feel more connected to your organization.

Should town hall meetings be in-person or virtual? 

In the past, a town hall meeting was usually an in-person event that took place at the company HQ. But the changes to work patterns we’ve seen over the past few years mean that virtual town hall meetings are now very common. 

It’s perfectly possible to host a town hall meeting on a platform like Google Meet or Microsoft Teams , and there are even some advantages to doing it this way. First, it allows all employees to attend the meeting, wherever they’re based. This means it’s often the only   way to have a town hall meeting that involves everyone if you’re a distributed or remote organization. 

Holding your town hall meeting online also makes it easier to record the meeting for people that can’t attend. They’ll be able to catch up later and experience the event in almost the same way as those who attended live. This levels the playing field for employees who live in different time zones or have different working hours. 

Here are the steps to follow if you want to host your first town hall meeting (or make your town hall meetings more effective): 

1. Figure out the logistics and build your team

Before you get to the actual content of your meeting, you need to decide on the platform you’ll use to host it. You should also think carefully about the time you host your meeting, especially if you have employees in different time zones. If you can’t find a time that works for everyone, go for the time that works for most, and ask other employees to watch the meeting recording within the next working day. This gets everyone on the same page as soon as possible. 

This is also the moment to build the team that will help run the meeting on the day. You’ll need to choose a host or MC, a variety of speakers, and a moderator to make sure everything runs smoothly. It’s also a good idea to have someone on hand for tech support in case something goes wrong.

2. Define the objective of the meeting 

Every town hall meeting should have a specific objective. This might be: 

• To share details about a new product feature
• To provide a quarterly or monthly sales update
• To explain a pivot or change the company is going through 

There are also other, softer reasons for hosting a town hall meeting, like building trust and improving employee morale. 

3. Plan your meeting agenda and timings 

Next, plan the agenda for the meeting, including the timings for each section. During the meeting, it’s important to be fairly strict with timings to ensure you keep your audience’s attention. That said, you should account for at least a little extra time in case you run over, particularly for the Q&A session. 

4. Prepare your content 

The next step is to help your presenters to prepare their slide decks and talking points. It’s a good idea to use simple slides with just a few words per slide. This way, presenters can move through them quickly and keep everyone’s attention. 

You should also have each presenter run through their presentation before the meeting to make sure it’s not too long. If they run over, work with them to find a more concise way of saying what they want to say. 

5.Send calendar invites to all employees

Let your employees know about the town hall meeting as early as possible so they have plenty of time to clear their calendars. As well as the time, date and location of the event, you should include the meeting agenda so employees know what to expect. 

You should also tell them about any rules you’ll have in place to make sure the meeting runs smoothly, such as asking employees to mute their mics when they’re not speaking. 

6. Ask for questions ahead of time

Town hall meetings usually end with a Q&A session, which gives employees an opportunity to ask questions about the things you’ve discussed. But you should also provide a space for employees to ask questions before   the meeting. 

This allows those who aren’t able to attend to contribute and get answers to their questions. Also, if certain questions come up multiple times, you could use this to inform your agenda for the meeting. After all, if a few employees are asking the same questions, there’s a good chance others are thinking about them too. 

7. Have a tech run-through before the meeting starts 

Arrange to meet with your team for a technical dry run around 30 minutes before the meeting starts. This involves running through presentations, checking that everyone’s mics work, and testing any apps or platforms you plan to use.

8. Start with a warm welcome

Town hall meetings usually begin with a greeting from the CEO and/or the meeting host. Some organizations ask a different employee to host the meeting each time, which can give it a more informal feel.

If possible, it’s great to welcome each participant by name as they join the meeting. You might also want to include a short icebreaker activity to help warm things up — like asking everyone a funny question and having them discuss it in groups. 

9. Include opportunities for participation 

Watching someone present for a long time can be tiring for employees. And you might begin to lose their attention if you don’t build in opportunities for participation.  Quick activities like surveys and polls can help break things up — as well as giving you useful insights into what your employees are thinking. 

Most video conferencing tools, including Zoom, Google Meet and MS Teams, include in-built poll features that can help you conduct a virtual “show of hands” to keep people engaged. And you could even introduce elements of gamification by using an app like Kahoot to quiz your audience on the things you’ve just talked about.  

10. Don’t neglect the Q&A section 

The Q&A section is one of the most important parts of a town hall meeting. To make it as effective as possible, encourage your audience to send in questions as they think of them during the meeting. It’s usually easiest if your event moderator collates the questions in a document as they come in, and then reads them to the presenters one by one during the Q&A session. 

It’s also important to prepare your presenters ahead of time for any difficult or sensitive questions that might come up. Presenters should feel comfortable saying that they don’t have an answer to a question. However, they should promise to answer the question at a later date, and let the employee know when this will be. 

11. Send a recap and ask for feedback 

After the event, send the recording with a short recap to everyone that was invited. This gives those who couldn’t attend the chance to catch up, and provides a useful refresher to everyone else. You could send this out in a simple email, but you might also want to put a more detailed recap on a dedicated intranet page . 

At this stage, it’s also a good idea to ask employees that attended the meeting for feedback. Asking simple, open-ended questions like “what did you enjoy?” and “what could have been better?” can help you improve in time for your next town hall meeting.  

Facilitate your town hall meeting with Happeo 

With Happeo’s Page Templates , it’s never been easier to prepare for a town hall meeting. You can create a page with all the details your employees need (including the time, date and link to the virtual meeting) in just a few minutes. 

Then, you can easily add details about the hosts so that employees can find out about them ahead of time, and include the agenda for the meeting so everyone knows what to expect. You can even provide a space for employees to ask their pre-meeting questions right within Happeo — so there’s no searching around for the right person to email. 

After the event,  you can post a recap, recording and survey link on the same page, so everyone knows where to find them.

Start a free trial to play around with Happeo’s town hall meeting template.

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Article • 12 min read

Company Town Hall Meetings

Communicating to a large audience.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Have you ever been to a "town hall" style meeting in your organization?

When done well, this type of meeting can be exciting, informative, and motivating. They can open up constructive dialog with the leadership team in your organization, and address any concerns or issues that people are worrying about.

However, poorly led town hall meetings can leave people feeling confused, unheard, and even dispirited. Badly organized meetings waste time, and hurt productivity.

In this article, we'll examine company town hall meetings in detail, and we'll discuss how you can make the best use of the opportunities that a town hall meeting presents.

What Is a Town Hall Meeting?

Originally, town residents used town hall meetings as an open forum to discuss political issues, solve problems, and vote on decisions that directly affected them. Today, many organizations have adopted this meeting format to communicate with their people.

A town hall meeting involves a large group of people – for example, everyone in an organization or department, or everyone who works on a particular site. They're usually held in a large space, such as a hall or conference center.

Senior leaders usually conduct these meetings, which can have several different purposes. For instance, you can use them to keep everyone informed about the organization's health, or about its progress toward key business goals; and you can use them to make big announcements and motivate people. These meetings can also be useful if you have to convey bad news: telling everyone at once helps to eliminate rumors and misinformation.

Put simply, town hall meetings are a way for you to communicate with your people directly, and address any questions or issues that they have. If you run them effectively, these meetings can be a valuable way to pass along important information, raise morale, reduce misunderstanding, and get valuable feedback.

Many organizations conduct a town hall meeting regularly – for example annually or quarterly – to communicate the organization's progress. Many also conduct a meeting whenever they have important or exciting news to share.

Preparing a Town Hall Meeting

While town hall meetings can be very useful, badly organized meetings will waste time, and will have a negative effect on your people. Use these strategies to prepare a town hall meeting that is informative, and effective.

1. Decide on Objectives

The first thing you need to do is to decide on the objectives of the meeting.

For instance, do you want to talk about your organization's progress? Do you want to publically thank people and teams for their efforts? Or, do you need to share good or bad news?

When you're thinking about objectives, don't forget about the future. For example, a town hall meeting provides a good chance to explain the organization's strategy and vision for the next few years. It's also a good opportunity to put an end to rumors and gossip.

It's important to make sure that you address people's concerns, and to make sure that you're planning a meeting that people will find useful and engaging. If you've held this type of meeting before, get feedback on how these could have been improved. You could also use employee satisfaction surveys to find out about people's concerns, so that you can address these as part of the meeting.

As well as key leaders in your organization, you may also want to invite people from various departments to talk about their projects, or about their experiences in their roles. This can help to foster a sense of involvement, and give people from within the wider organization a chance to have their say, and to practice their public speaking and presentation skills.

Our article on Running Effective Meetings helps you define a meeting's objectives, so that you can get your message across clearly.

2. Create an Agenda

Next, create an agenda for your town hall meeting, so that everyone knows what to expect and why they need to attend. Prepare a list of the main points you will cover, and identify the people who will be speaking and presenting. This is also a good chance to plan for any visual aids that you'll need.

As part of this, think about how you can add interest to the meeting. For example, instead of giving a speech about an upcoming change, you could set up a mock interview, where a team member guides a senior manager through a pre-prepared question and answer session. You could create a panel discussion and put everyone on the senior leadership team on stage to talk and answer questions. Or, you could split the audience into groups, and ask one person from each group to put their group's questions to a panel.

Remember, town hall meetings need to pass along important information, but they should also be interesting and engaging for everyone who attends.

3. Choose an Appropriate Location

When choosing a location, make sure that it can handle the number of expected attendees. If your organization is large, or if it needs to maintain a continuous service, consider holding several back-to-back meetings to accommodate everyone on the same day, or book conference facilities at a local hotel or university. Wherever you choose, make sure that everyone will be able to hear clearly, and ensure that the location is convenient for as many of your people as possible.

Also, decide whether you need to provide food or drink, or whether you need to use a stage or large screen, so that everyone can see and hear properly.

If you have satellite offices or team members who work virtually, consider broadcasting the meeting over the internet, and allow people to ask questions by email or phone. You might also want to film the event, so that absent team members can view it later.

Use our Presentation Planning Checklist to plan your setup and presentation.

4. Brief People Effectively

Before you conduct a town hall meeting, brief your people on what the meeting is about and why their attendance is important. (This is especially important if you've never held one before.)

You'll also want to announce the date and time of the meeting well in advance, so that people are properly prepared to take time away from their day-to-day roles. Try to pick a date when people are unlikely to be busy, or taking vacations.

Not everyone will be happy about devoting time to a town hall meeting, especially if they're busy. Define the meeting's objective clearly, and explain why people will benefit from being there.

Nearer the time, give people a copy of the meeting's agenda, so that they know what to expect.

During and After the Meeting

When it comes to the meeting, follow these strategies to make sure that it runs smoothly.

1. Speak Simply and Directly

It can be tempting to create an elaborate slide presentation to communicate information. However, this is a common mistake, and it may disconnect you from your audience.

Instead, encourage all speakers to keep things simple. Remember, your goal is to talk to your people and to connect with them. Don't read information directly from slides. Instead, use any slides to reinforce what you're saying.

Stay informal, and talk directly with your people. Make sure that you let your audience know what's in it for them: that is, why they need to listen.

Also, make sure that you're talking on their level; remember, not everyone in the audience will have an advanced degree or in-depth industry knowledge. If possible, avoid jargon and technical terms.

If you want to develop your presentation skills, take our How Good Are Your Presentation Skills? self-test to see where you can improve.

2. Handle Conflict Calmly

Your town hall meeting should encourage open communication from everyone in the room. This means that there's a good chance that someone will step up with a complaint or a contentious issue.

If people have the courage and desire to speak up, then this means they're open and willing to communicate with you to get it resolved. It can be an opportunity, not a threat, when people speak up like this.

Learn how to think on your feet , so that you remain calm and composed when under pressure. Brush up on your conflict resolution skills , and think about how to handle conflict in meetings , so you know the best way to communicate with the other person and address the issue fairly and openly.

You may also want to practice dealing with this type of scenario using role play .

3. Be Honest

Sometimes you'll use a town hall meeting to talk about tough issues that the organization is facing or to deliver bad news. Be honest with everyone; anything less will only start rumors and reduce morale.

How you convey challenging news is critical. Don't sugarcoat the information, and watch your body language .

Once you've conveyed the toughest news, focus on something positive. Be sincere, show the faith you have in your people and their talents, and discuss what all of you can and will do to overcome this challenge. Give your team members hope and a mission that they can rally around.

4. Provide Feedback Options

Sometimes people regard town hall meetings with skepticism. They might not feel comfortable voicing a complaint, or asking a challenging question, because they're afraid that there will be consequences if they speak up.

So, make sure that you provide several feedback channels. For instance, you could set up a box where people can submit questions anonymously during a break. You can then address some of these concerns during the meeting. Alternatively, you can encourage people to use email, Instant Messaging or Twitter to ask questions while people are presenting.

5. Take Notes

Appoint someone to take notes on all the issues you discuss, the questions that people raise, and any actions that you or other people need to take.

Then, after the meeting, make sure that everyone in the organization gets a copy. Not only will this reinforce what you discussed, but it will also show that you and the leadership team are accountable for the promises that you make to your people.

6. Follow up on Suggestions

Your people will want to know that you and the rest of the leadership team listened to the concerns and suggestions that they raised during the town hall meeting, and that you're taking them seriously. You'll damage the trust they have in you if you fail to follow up.

So, make sure that you stay in contact with your people after the meeting and provide regular updates on what you're doing to resolve issues. You can post updates on your organization's blog or intranet, send out a regular email, or touch base personally.

Also, get further feedback on how the meeting went, so that you can make improvements next time round.

Company town hall meetings are companywide meetings, which are usually conducted by senior leaders to communicate important information.

To organize an effective town hall meeting, decide on its objectives, create an agenda, and choose an appropriate location. Also, brief people on what to expect.

Speak simply and directly during the meeting, keeping slide use to a minimum. Also, handle conflict effectively, be honest, and let people give feedback in a variety of ways.

Finally, make sure that someone takes notes, and then follow up and take action on issues raised in the meeting.

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How to Run a Stellar Town Hall Meeting

Company town hall meetings, also known as " all-hands" meetings , bring the team together to talk about challenges, share information, and contribute ideas. When done right, these meetings can be exciting, informative, and motivating. On the other hand, poorly organized meetings end up wasting time and might even negatively impact morale.

If you’re tasked with organizing a company town hall meeting, you should know that these meetings have changed over time. Initially a way for management to communicate with the rest of the company, these meetings now involve more interaction. What’s more, with the rise of hybrid and remote teams in many companies, town halls often happen online.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at what is a town hall meeting and discuss how to organize one that will engage and inspire your team.

Planning and Preparation

Use these tactics to prepare for a company town hall meeting that’s effective and informative:

• Define Meeting Objectives: Decide why your town hall is happening. It could be about important business news, like big sales or a new product. Or maybe it’s to build trust or motivate the team. Knowing the goal helps plan the town hall meeting agenda, choose speakers, and figure out if you need extra sessions.
• Set a Date and Time: Decide on a date early, taking into account different employee time zones. Make sure it works for everyone, including those with flexible schedules.
• Build a Structured Agenda: Plan out a clear agenda once you have the date. Focus on two or three important things related to your goal. An average town hall should last 60 to 90 minutes. If it's shorter, you might miss out on good discussions. If it's longer, attendees might start losing interest, especially in virtual town hall meetings where distractions are a click away.
• Prepare Engaging Presentations: Make your presentations interesting by adding visuals and important info. If possible, ask employees what they want to hear in advance.

Promotion and Communication

Company town hall meetings need to be completely inclusive. Here’s how to make sure everyone is included and aligned with the mission:

Let Everyone Know About the Meeting

Before your town hall, tell your team what the meeting is about and why it is important for them to attend, especially if it's the first time. Share the date well in advance, picking a time when people aren’t busy or on vacation.

Make sure to send out invites early with the date and time. Explain how an online town hall meeting works, and what everyone needs to do, and share any tech details. As it gets closer, share the meeting agenda with your team so that all members know what to expect. 

Focus on Open and Honest Communication

When it comes to the meeting, simplify your communication by speaking directly to your audience and avoiding elaborate presentation slides. Keep it informal and avoid any jargon or technical terms. 

If you need to deliver tough news during the meeting, be honest, avoid sugarcoating, and watch your body language. Remember to follow up with a positive focus, expressing faith in your team and discussing collective actions to overcome challenges.

If conflict arises when people are given an opportunity to speak, try to remain calm and view it as an opportunity for open communication.

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Engagement and Interaction

So, how to put together effective town hall meetings that ensure employee engagement and foster a sense of belonging? Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind: 

• Start with a Fun Icebreaker: Your virtual town hall meeting doesn’t need to be too serious. Start your virtual town hall with a fun icebreaker using our slide decks over Zoom. Ask thoughtful or light-hearted questions and watch your team members share their answers. If possible, break the team into small groups for more interaction within the given time. An engaging opening captures everyone’s attention and keeps attendees engaged.
• Celebrate Company Achievements: Create a sense of togetherness by celebrating your staff's achievements. Highlight individual or team successes, share milestones, and discuss business results. Showing appreciation for your team’s hard work is a great way to create a positive atmosphere.
• Give Your Employees a Voice: Open the floor for the team to voice their concerns and share ideas. Dedicate time to a live Q&A session too. This shows your commitment to openness and transparency.
• Share the Stage: Avoid leaving the whole event to the CEO and instead, allow your senior leadership team to speak as well. This allows you to create a more comprehensive and engaging experience for everyone. You can even invite an outside speaker to energize and motivate your employees. 

Handling Questions and Feedback

Make your company town hall meeting better by using tech for instant feedback. Whether it's an in-person, hybrid, or virtual meeting, tools like Slides with Friends' live polling feature give you an opportunity to collect feedback through graphs, bar charts, ratings, "per player" stats, and more.

Keep in mind that some participants might not feel comfortable asking challenging questions or voicing their complaints. Be sure to provide additional channels where they can do this, such as an interactive presentation, instant messaging or email. Having diverse feedback channels and tech tools ensures you really understand what people think, helping you improve each time.

You can even have your leadership/presenters to ask your audience a question. This will allow you to get instant feedback and make the communication more meaningful. 

Follow-up and Action Steps

After the town hall meeting, it's key to follow up. Summarize the main points and let everyone know what's happening next. This keeps everyone in the loop and shows that their thoughts matter. Clear communication after the meeting makes sure everyone is on the same page and ready for the next steps.

Your people will want to know that you and the rest of the leadership team listened to the concerns and suggestions that they raised during the company town hall meeting and that you're taking them seriously. 

So, make sure that you stay in contact with your people after the meeting and provide regular updates on what you're doing to resolve issues. You can post updates on your organization's intranet or blog, send out an email, or touch base personally. Also, use Slides with Friends’ interactive features to get an idea about how the meeting went and how to make future company town hall meetings better.

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Town Hall Meetings: How to Engage Your Audience

• Audience Response Tools

Town hall meetings are some of the most important meetings you’ll attend. If you’re the one making the presentation and hosting, town hall meetings are a great opportunity to show your leadership skills and get everyone on the same page. They also set a precedent for hard work and positivity going forward.

It’s important to be as prepared as possible before getting up on that stage. If you don’t quite know where to begin, keep on reading and follow this simple guide.

What Is a Town Hall Meeting?

‘Town Hall’ comes from the 17th century New England “town” meetings where the community comes together to discuss important community and town-wide issues. The idea is similar in regards to business, except the discussion revolves around the townspeople and their concerns.

A town hall meeting is a meeting that includes (ideally) all employees. It’s an opportunity to get the entire company on the same page, take input from employees, and engage with leadership. Most important, it’s an engaging, fun, and informative get-together.

Typically, executives will present high-level, key initiatives, followed by a Q&A session. Its best practice to get the audience engaged for feedback and dialogue. The idea is to reach as many people as possible to better inform the public as a whole.

Town hall meetings are a key way companies build a sense of community and purpose by aligning company purpose.

Importance of Town Hall Meetings

The importance of town hall meetings can’t be stressed enough. Again, this is one of the only times that you’ll have all of, or at least most of, your employees under the same roof. It offers a rare opportunity to get everyone motivated, up-to-date, and on the same page.

Plus, it’s a pretty great way to let people know what kind of leader you are, and remind them why they should be excited about their company.

Considering this, a town hall meeting isn’t something you want to take lightly. It’s important to keep the audience interested and engaged with what they’re hearing. Town Hall meetings are important, so they need to feel important.

A memorable town hall meeting will be talked about long after it’s over. It’ll re-enthuse your employees and get them excited for what’s to come. It’s also a great way to show transparency and make your employees feel cared about. So yeah, it’s a pretty important meeting.

But don’t stress! There’s a lot you can do to make town hall meetings go buttery smooth and have a great time with your employees in the process.

Three Pillars of Audience Engagement

If you want to hold a successful town hall meeting, it’s important to remember these three pillars of audience engagement:

It’s crucial to make sure your employees feel heard. Engage with them by asking for their input and respond in meaningful ways. Let them give their feedback and give feedback in return. Even if it’s not Q&A time, take feedback from any hand that may rise or use a tool like MeetingPulse to make it more efficient. Show that you’re aware, willing to take feedback, and always respond positively.

Collaboration

Collaborate with your audience. Getting on stage and talking at your audience rather than with them feels more like a lecture than a conversation. Keep your tone casual and implement collaborative practices into your meeting to keep them fully engaged.

Having a collaborative town hall meeting sets the precedent for work going forward. It lets the team know that they’re invited to share their insight and that their opinions matter.

It’s important to not only answer questions but to ask questions . You can do this even before the Q&A with polls and surveys. These can be conducted during the presentation. Just make sure to fit it into your agenda.

Polls are a great way to get feedback in an interactive way that makes the audience get involved and feel listened to. Surveys let you learn more about the audience members, allowing you to use that data to make more informed decisions or actions.

When it comes to questions, you also want to let the audience have a turn. This is another way for them to feel heard. Give your audience straightforward, informed answers. Don’t dismiss an audience member’s questions — there’s no such thing as bad questions.

‍ Related: How to Create an Anonymous Survey for Your Employees

Expert Planning

The effort you put into preparing for your town hall meeting will be evident to your audience and employees. It will tell them right away how much you care, and in turn, how much they should care about the meeting.

Having a clear and defined objective will show strong leadership, and get everyone on the same page.

‍ Set a detailed agenda about what you intend to cover and make it available as soon as possible so that your attendees know what to expect and can prepare accordingly. Stick to this agenda as well as you can so that there is a sense of focus. Rehearse the presentation as much as you can. Smooth delivery and clear communication will give your employees more confidence in what you’re saying.

Town Hall Meetings: More Strategies that Work

Try following these innovative strategies. Using these will make your presentation go smoother, and hold the audience’s interest.

Play Some Music

Playing music before your town hall meeting helps your audience feel relaxed. It also gets them excited for what’s to come. Playing some upbeat music makes the meeting feel exciting before anyone even gets on stage.

Use Visuals

This is a classic presentation rule. If you’re using images and slides, don’t overfill them with words and jargon. Use visuals (graphs, images, even memes) to keep the audience engaged and interested.

Don’t Take it Too Seriously

Try to keep your tone conversational and casual. Don’t act like Mr. or Mrs. Big-Shot, and don’t mumble or use a monotone voice. A good speaker will speak clearly, speak naturally, and won’t be afraid to throw in a few jokes here and there to break up the business talk.

Keep it Minimal

Cut out as much fat as you can. Don’t use too many slides, and keep your slides concise and easy to understand. If there’s anything in your presentation that feels unnecessary, cut it — once the audience starts feeling bored it’s going to be hard to get them back.

Allow Ample Time for Q&A

You don’t want to rush through your presentation. You also don’t want to rush through the Q&A session. You should treat the Q&A segment with as much weight as your presentation.

Don’t rush through or brush off questions. Take time to answer, and make sure your Q&A is just as engaging as your presentation.

‍ Use technology like MeetingPulse …and do all of the above! Audience engagement tools like MeetingPulse can help an audience feel like they matter more by increasing engagement between you, the presenter, and your audience.

MeetingPulse lets you broadcast live Q&A sessions, take polls, and engage in fun quizzes during your meeting. You can collect responses and feedback in real-time with sentiment charts to measure the “pulse” of the room. It’s a great way to get a sense of the flow of the meeting and whether or not everyone is engaged.

You can attach documents like agendas to encourage collaboration, and use the Q&A feature to ask questions . Any questions you don’t have time to answer can be saved for later since you’re collecting them digitally. You can also create raffles with MeetingPulse and incorporate fun visuals.

A comprehensive tool like this will help you engage your audience on multiple levels.

Meeting Your Bottom Line

Follow the above strategies and you’ll find it a lot easier to follow your agenda and meet your goals. A visual presentation with minimal slides will ensure you’re not droning on over the given time. An ample Q&A is one of the best ways to make your employees feel heard, and will leave them on a positive note.

You can slot MeetingPulse anywhere into your presentation. It is one of the few things that your audience probably won’t mind going a little over-time. Plus, MeetingPulse polls and Q&A sessions work as a way to predict the possible tone of the upcoming Q&A.

Try your absolute hardest to stick to the agenda. Sometimes things get derailed or go a little long, but it’s important to try and minimize this. If you lose your audience, it can be hard to get them back .

The most important thing is to practice, practice, practice. Practice in front of other executives, friends, and take feedback through the whole process. That way, it’ll be easier to cut the fat and reach your perfect timing.

Any presentation is stressful even for the most talented speakers. The more you practice the strategies above, the less stress you’ll feel. With ample practice and strategizing, the town hall meeting will seem like a walk in the park!

It’s Time to Rock That Town Hall Meeting

Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be ready to rock any upcoming town hall meetings. There’s no better feeling in the world than giving an engaging, memorable presentation. Your employees get to know you better, and you’ll gain a massive confidence boost in your leadership skills.

Get that agenda going, hone in the skills given here, and practice, practice, practice. Do this and you can’t go wrong. To get set up with MeetingPulse, visit our services page and see what we can do for you. We’d be happy to help.

Get started with MeetingPulse today!

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Maximizing Engagement: Your Essential Guide to Hosting a Successful Virtual Town Hall Meeting

By Drew Moffitt • March 6, 2024

Need to bridge the distance in your team with a virtual town hall meeting? This guide is your blueprint for connecting management and employees effectively through digital means. Here, you’ll learn to select apt technology, drive engagement , and align your team’s mission—all in a few key steps. Prepare to build a more unified, motivated workforce with our straightforward tips.

• Key takeaways
• Virtual town hall meetings are integral for aligning employees with company goals, facilitating interactive discussions, and building corporate culture through various engaging and inclusive activities.
• Crafting a well-structured town hall agenda with key elements like introductions, company updates, Q&A sessions, and guest speakers is essential, as is choosing the right timing and pacing for maximum participation across time zones.
• Selecting the right technological platform is crucial for the success of a virtual town hall meeting, with features like breakout rooms, polls, real-time chat, and a reliable tech team ready to support the event.

Virtual town hall meetings unveiled

A virtual town hall meeting, also known as an online town hall meeting, is an online company-wide event that serves multiple purposes. It keeps the workforce updated about business results, changes, and the general direction of the company, aligning everyone to the same goals. This alignment is key to closing the gap between management and employees and building a strong corporate culture .

The benefits of virtual town hall meetings include:

• Increased employee engagement
• Alignment with shared values and objectives
• Facilitate question-and-answer-based interaction
• Distinguish from all-hands meetings that focus on presenting a message and key presentations.

Platforms like Zoom have eased the transition to virtual town hall meetings by enabling companies to involve all employees without the need for travel, promoting inclusivity regardless of geographic location. However, platforms like Kumospace have taken this a step further, offering a more engaging and interactive town hall meeting experience.

Crafting the ideal virtual town hall agenda

Crafting a well-structured agenda , one that aligns with the company’s mission and objectives is a crucial step toward a successful virtual town hall meeting. This includes setting clear and specific objectives such as introducing new product features or sharing strategic changes.

A well-structured agenda keeps the content focused and encourages active employee engagement.

Key elements of a town hall meeting agenda

A typical company town hall meeting agenda includes an introduction, company updates, and a closing Q&A session. For larger companies, the focus of company town hall meetings is more on deep engagement with celebrations, announcements, and employee questions. This ensures the meeting is valuable and facilitates complex internal communication.

Encouraging employees to participate by submitting their questions or topics in advance has several benefits:

• It streamlines the Q&A portion of the meeting and allows speakers to prepare thoughtful responses.
• It encourages active participation from employees.
• It helps maintain engagement throughout the meeting.

To bring freshness to the discussion and promote open dialogue among participants, consider inviting guest speakers to the town hall. They can present new topics and provide new insights, adding another layer of engagement to your virtual town hall meeting.

Timing and pacing for maximum engagement

As you plan a virtual town hall meeting, consider timing and pacing as crucial factors. To include employees across different time zones, mid-week or end-of-week slots are typically the best. Specifically, Thursday at 6:00 PM IST has been popular for diverse audiences.

For longer meetings, scheduled breaks are recommended. These help attendees relax and re-engage with the content, ensuring they maintain their attention throughout the event.

The size of the audience is another key factor in structuring the timing of sessions and participatory activities like Q&A. For larger audiences, engagement-driven elements such as games and trivia can be organized to keep the audience attentive and engaged. The chosen platform should support the number of participants, manage varying time zones, and align with the event’s engagement goals.

Inclusion of interactive activities

For any successful virtual town hall meeting, incorporating interactive elements is critical. They give employees a voice and foster open dialogue. Activities such as live polls and Q&A sessions, with questions being collected in advance, ensure impromptu participation during the event.

Virtual breakout rooms and collaborative games like virtual charades and virtual escape rooms offer a way for teams to work together and engage deeply with the town hall content. Humorous and creative breaks, like virtual Pictionary, Bingo, trivia, jam sessions, and cooking classes, foster team spirit and introduce friendly competition, making the town hall an event to remember.

To ensure active engagement, advanced planning is necessary. Here are some tips to create a successful virtual town hall:

• Mix up presentation styles like panel discussions to maintain interest throughout the event.
• Create a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere to support open conversations.
• Make the content memorable and engaging for all attendees.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your virtual town hall is a success.

The technology behind effective virtual town halls

Next, we’ll explore the technology that powers these virtual town hall meetings. Platforms like Kumospace offer an exceptional experience for hosting such events. They integrate key features such as:

• Video conferencing
• Screen-sharing
• Chat messaging

By integrating all necessary components into one suite, streamlining the company town hall setup becomes much more efficient, paving the way for the next town hall and future town halls.

Choosing the right platform

A few key features should be considered when selecting a virtual meeting platform. These include:

• Breakout rooms
• Speed networking
• Superior moderation
• Real-time chat functions

These features are crucial for a successful virtual town hall meeting.

A platform that offers live streaming, interactive features , and technical support capabilities is essential for participant inclusion. The chosen platform must be user-friendly and accessible to ensure full engagement and avoid excluding any participants.

Factors like the audience’s size and technical proficiency, along with the desired level of engagement, are key considerations when selecting a virtual meeting platform. Platforms like Kumospace provide an engaging and interactive experience for virtual town hall meetings, making them a top choice for many companies.

Preparing your tech team

For the smooth execution of a virtual town hall meeting, it’s vital to have an in-house tech team ready for potential technical errors. This team made up of volunteers for moderation and technical support, can include roles such as a moderator, IT staff, and possibly a professional emcee.

To minimize the risk of technical errors during the town hall, it is essential to perform a technical dry run the day before the meeting. This involves:

• Setting up and testing the meeting software
• Testing the chat app
• Testing the event tools
• Testing connectivity

Having a contingency plan for handling potential technical errors is vital to minimize disruption and ensure continuous operation during the town hall meeting. Clear roles should be assigned to manage interactive elements and keep the virtual meeting on track, ensuring every team member knows their responsibilities.

Engaging your audience: from leadership to every employee

After crafting the agenda and choosing the platform, the subsequent step is engaging the audience. From leadership to every employee, everyone’s involvement is crucial in making virtual town hall meetings a success. Let’s dive into the strategies that can help achieve this.

Role of senior leaders in driving engagement

During town hall meetings, company executives play a pivotal role in driving engagement. By leading by example , they create better communication channels and more interaction between the C-Suite and employees. This often starts with an executive or CEO setting an inspiring tone at the start of the town hall.

The senior leadership team, consisting of senior leaders, is instrumental in fostering a culture of openness and strengthening employee trust. They can do this by being prepared to discuss key updates, future plans, and addressing questions transparently.

By setting a motivational agenda that includes leadership speeches, recognition sessions, and aligning with company values, senior leaders play a pivotal role in boosting team morale. Platforms like Kumospace enable leaders to dynamically and inclusively connect with their teams, enhancing engagement during virtual town hall meetings.

Recognizing employee contributions

To promote a sense of belonging and develop a high-performance company culture, it’s effective to recognize employee contributions. Celebrating employee achievements during the town hall can make employees feel valued and appreciated .

Segments to include in the virtual town hall meeting agenda:

• Welcome new team members
• Recognize work anniversaries
• Celebrate birthdays
• Acknowledge notable departures

Birthday celebrations can be included in town hall agendas through monthly acknowledgments, delivering cakes, or playing virtual games, making the event more engaging and inclusive.

Rewarding top performers with virtual tokens of appreciation, such as Hoppier cards, creates an incentive for high achievement and boosts employee morale.

Facilitating open dialogue

Employees are given a platform to engage in open dialogue through virtual town hall meetings. They can ask questions, share their thoughts, and provide feedback to senior management. Involving the audience through polls, questions, and feedback during the session can make the virtual town hall meeting more engaging.

Ending the town hall with a live Q&A session, including curated and spontaneous questions, can enhance two-way communication and engagement. Creating a dedicated talk space or channel for real-time discussion allows attendees to contribute to the virtual town hall meeting. Such spaces ensure that all voices are heard and concerns are addressed in real time.

These discussions can lead to better strategies for stimulating open dialogue among employees.

Post-town hall follow-up: ensuring lasting impact

The impact of a virtual town hall meeting is assessed not only by what occurs during the event but also by the aftermath. A thorough and thoughtful follow-up is crucial to ensure the event’s benefits are sustained long-term.

Sharing meeting outcomes

To ensure information reaches, recording the town hall meeting and making the recording accessible to employees post-event is beneficial. This includes those who could not attend and helps keep key discussions and decisions in organizational memory.

The recap email sent to participants should include:

• Action items
• Discussion points

This ensures clarity in communication and accountability for follow-up actions .

Creating a dedicated channel for real-time discussion about the town hall meeting can continue the engagement, provide a space for questions to be raised, and allow for further reflection on the meeting’s content.

Gathering feedback for future meetings

To improve future virtual town hall meetings, it’s essential to collect feedback. Surveys or suggestion boxes leading up to the meeting are effective for incorporating employee feedback into town hall meetings.

Simple feedback polls with questions on meeting likes, dislikes, and areas for improvement can yield actionable insights from employees. Quantifying employee feedback on the town hall event through star ratings in the employee newsletter can also be beneficial.

Regular collection and analysis of feedback regarding town hall meetings can lead to better strategies for stimulating open dialogue among employees. This helps pinpoint trends and improvements, which is vital for enhancing the quality of future virtual town hall meetings.

Transforming the virtual experience with Kumospace

The virtual town hall experience is transformed by a platform called Kumospace. It features:

• Custom images and GIFs for branding
• Virtual drink stations
• YouTube streaming on virtual TVs
• Secondary camera presentation, which enhances the virtual town hall experience.

Kumospace supports group broadcasts suitable for group presentations or panel discussions, adding to the collaborative aspect of town hall meetings. It provides pre-designed floor templates and allows for real-time adjustment of floor settings and participant management, encouraging dynamic interaction during the town hall.

Hosts can invite guests through the in-platform invite button, direct links, or sharing the unique Kumospace URL, offering flexible options for attendees to join the event. This makes Kumospace an ideal choice for hosting memorable virtual town hall meetings.

To wrap up, virtual town hall meetings are a powerful tool for fostering open communication, alignment, and engagement within a company. Crafting a well-structured agenda, choosing the right technology, and facilitating open dialogue are key to hosting successful virtual town hall meetings. Platforms like Kumospace offer an ideal solution, providing interactive and engaging experiences for all attendees.

Frequently asked questions

How do you conduct a virtual town hall meeting  .

To conduct a virtual town hall meeting, first define the meeting objective, plan the agenda, prepare content, send invitations, invite questions in advance, perform a technical dry run, and welcome your attendees. This will help ensure a successful and engaging virtual town hall meeting.

What are virtual town halls?  

Virtual town halls are digital versions of traditional town hall meetings, allowing for updates, feedback collection, and two-way communication with the workforce.

How to do a town hall meeting on Kumospace?  

To host a virtual town hall meeting with Kumospace, start by selecting a date and inviting all relevant participants. Ensure that your Kumospace account is set up and ready for the event, including any necessary configurations or customizations. Schedule the meeting within Kumospace and provide technical assistance to attendees as needed. Determine whether the meeting format will be a live session within Kumospace's virtual environment or a webinar-style presentation. By following these steps and leveraging the features of Kumospace, you can effectively host a successful and engaging virtual town hall meeting.

What are the benefits of virtual town halls  

Virtual town halls offer the benefits of live updates, performance reviews, goal tracking, and community building among colleagues. They provide a platform for company leaders to connect with employees and foster a sense of community.

What is the purpose of a virtual town hall meeting?  

The purpose of a virtual town hall meeting is to keep the workforce informed about business results, changes, and the company's general direction, align everyone to the same goals, and build a strong corporate culture. It helps to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards common objectives.

Transform the way your team works from anywhere.

A virtual office in Kumospace lets teams thrive together by doing their best work no matter where they are geographically.

Drew leads marketing at Kumospace. Prior to joining Kumospace, he spent his career founding and operating businesses. His work has been featured in over 50 publications. Outside of work, Drew is an avid skier and sailor. A wholehearted extrovert, he organizes VentureSails, a series of networking events for founders and tech investors.

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What is a Company Town Hall Meeting? (+ How to Plan and Conduct One)

Think about the last “town hall” meeting you attended at your company. Was it something you and your colleagues looked forward to? Or, did seeing the time block on your calendar fill you with anxiety (over losing time in your day), annoyance (not wanting to sit through an excruciatingly boring meeting) or, worst of all, apathy (having no interest in attending knowing the content wouldn’t be relevant)?

Unfortunately, the latter is the case for many employees today.

While the concept of a town hall dates far back beyond our modern corporate world and these meetings played a crucial role in internal communications during the height of the pandemic, many employees still report that they can feel like a chore.

This is partly because employee needs and expectations are evolving in today’s “new reality”; in many cases, employees want to feel personally connected to their leaders, the company vision and values, and what the organization stands for.

There is a critical opportunity now for leaders and communications professionals to deliver far more informative, interactive and meaningful town halls that will engage employees.

Whether you are a seasoned planner or embarking on setting up your company’s first town hall meeting, we’ll explore in this blog post why town halls are important, the components of a successful town hall, steps you can take to plan one, a sample agenda and best practices to inform, engage and inspire your employees.

What is a Company Town Hall Meeting?

Town halls – also commonly referred to as “all-hands meetings” – are often the centerpiece of a company’s internal communications plan. They are leadership’s annual, quarterly or, sometimes more frequent, opportunity to talk with employees about business results, priorities, future plans and strategies, and to recognize individual or team achievements.

In the best cases, these sessions are interactive and inspiring, moving beyond the “talk at” and “command/control” formats to actually build an engaging, informative conversation with employees.

Why are Town Hall Meetings important for an organization?

Town hall meetings are unique from company to company and serve different roles for different leadership teams. Regardless of your company’s size, your industry or the challenges you might be facing, an effective town hall can be an important tool to aid with employee engagement, trust in leadership and sense of belonging – three pillars that are critical to retaining employees in today’s ultra-competitive labor market. Let’s break them down:

• Engagement : Engagement is an emotional connection employees have with their work, which in turn allows them to identify with, be motivated by and be willing to spend extra effort for their employer. Engaged employees are also often incredible advocates on behalf of a company and the brand. Today, however, employee engagement levels are at an all-time low – the latest Gallup survey reports that employee engagement saw its first annual decline in a decade, dropping to just 32% in the first part of this year.
• Trust : Trust is needed more than ever as companies move past the pandemic and establish their new reality. In today’s business environment, without trust, it’s impossible to have an effective hybrid or remote workforce, create a meaningful employee experience, engage and retain top talent, and more. Employees who trust their leaders will move mountains for them and be more engaged in the business.
• Sense of belonging : Belonging is a basic human need and one that translates to the work environment. Employees want to feel supported, included and part of something larger than themselves. The latest labor reports show that the “Great Resignation” isn’t slowing down, and employees are still leaving their jobs in droves. Fostering a sense of a belonging among your workforce can be the difference between an employee staying and leaving for their next opportunity.

Key Components of a Town Hall Meeting

So, how can you put together an effective town hall (whether it’s a virtual town hall meeting, hybrid or in-person) to help you engage your employees, enhance trust levels and foster a sense of belonging?

Here are the key components every town hall should include:

• Business update : Dedicate time to reviewing your company’s strategic goals and progress you have made against them or the challenges you might be facing. Help employees understand their role in advancing your business strategy and achieving key priorities. Various studies show that anywhere from 60% to 95% of employees don’t know their company’s strategy – it is the job of leaders to bridge this gap and drive performance. Remember to put the update in plain language to help employees see themselves in the strategy.
• Leader-driven : Say you conduct town halls quarterly and have 12 members on your senior leadership team. Ahead of each town hall, assign 3 leaders to recognize their teams. Provide them parameters to help them identify team members (i.e., this quarter we’re highlighting employees who live the company values or helped advance a specific priority). Honor team members’ recognition with a meaningful reward – such as lunch with the CEO – instead of a trophy or swag.
• Peer-driven : Put the recognition in the hands of employees and end your meeting on a high note. Call on one employee to recognize a peer for something they did, who will then name another peer, and so on. Each recognition recipient can receive a small gift card or other token. By making recognition a regular part of town halls, you’ll create a culture of gratitude and belonging.
• Location of your audience: Do you have employees attending live and virtually? You’ll need to incorporate technology that ensures remote employees have equal opportunity to submit their questions.
• Leadership comfort/skill level : How strong are your leaders as communicators? Do they need advance Q&A prep or can they answer off the cuff? If they are still building confidence as a communicator, implementing an approach that allows a member of the communications team to field questions through a platform and prompt the leader will help set them up for success.
• Watch out : Be careful not to screen all difficult questions – leaders need to be transparent and demonstrate vulnerability to earn trust from their workforce.
• The size of your audience : If you are speaking to a room with hundreds of employees, will everyone have a fair shot at asking a question or only those in the front row?

Town Hall Meeting Sample Agenda

The average town hall typically runs anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes – shorter than that and you’ll lose valuable open discussion time, longer than that you risk losing employee attention (this especially goes for virtual town hall meetings, where distractions are easily accessible).

Building on the three key components above, what might a town hall agenda template look like?

Town Hall Meeting Planning Checklist

Now that you have a sample outline to build from for your next town hall meeting, what are the necessary steps you need to take to align on your agenda, gather your content and ensure it goes off without a hitch?

Schedule your town hall cadence at the beginning of the year; ensure calendar invites are on leaders’ calendars as early as possible to avoid future scheduling conflicts

Conduct an initial planning session between the CEO/President (or your top leader) and the communications team to align on the agenda for the town hall (2-3 weeks prior)

Reach out to speakers and subject matter experts to gather content/slide visuals (1-2 weeks prior)

Build out the slide deck and work with design services (if available) to create a cohesive presentation (3-4 days prior)

Draft the anticipated Q&A document and circulate it with leaders who will be responsible for fielding questions (3-4 days prior)

Conduct a rehearsal with all speakers (1-2 days prior)

Conduct the final tech check and discuss any last-minute questions from speakers (morning of)

Scenario Planning

In today’s business environment, town halls are taking on different shapes and formats, and constantly evolving to adapt to the shifting workforce composition. What are some common scenarios you can expect to encounter in planning your town hall, whether it’s a virtual town hall, in-person, or hybrid, and how can you prepare for them?

Hybrid Attendees:

Gone are the days of an entire organization gathering in-person at a single location for a company town hall. A growing number of companies, including 3M, Zillow and Twitter, have introduced policies to allow the majority of their employees to work from home permanently, even after the pandemic. Companies that are “remote first,” have a hybrid workforce or even different office locations need to prioritize finding an advanced technology solution that will support the needs of their town hall. Even if your company defaulted to one platform during the pandemic, ask yourself if it’s meeting your communications needs today:

• Is there an attendee cap or time limit for sessions?
• Can users submit questions and chat?
• Is this a user-friendly experience for employees?
• How is audio and video buffering?
• Can the meeting be recorded?
• Does it offer closed captioning or live translated captions?

Regularly assess your workforce and your communication needs, and ensure you are using the platform that is best for your company.

Employees Across Shifts and Time Zones:

If a portion of your workforce is not on shift during the town hall or cannot leave their workstation to attend or works from a different time zone, it is important to make the content available to them at a time they can access it. To do so, leaders could host the town hall more than once (e.g., one morning and one evening session) or you can record the town hall and send a replay link along with a written recap note to all employees. Still, it is difficult to ensure that every single employee will be able to attend the meeting or watch the replay. Thus, it is important to set expectations with leaders on what they need to communicate to their teams and provide them with the necessary support to cascade the information accordingly (e.g., messaging points, leader toolkits, presentation slides).

Tips to Take Your Town Hall to the Next Level

With your agenda, planning checklist and meeting technology in place, what other factors might you consider to transform your town hall from that dreaded monthly meeting to a must-attend event? Consider the following ideas:

• Incorporate audience response technology to engage your audience. Use in-meeting polling to invite employees (in the room and globally) to share real-time impressions of a big agenda item. Invite responses to questions and have those responses show up on the screen as word clouds or other formats. Input could be prompted with a few questions during the session – for example: What excites you most about this big idea? What will you tell your family/friends about this idea?
• Share the stage. Don’t let your town hall become the CEO show. Build trust in your entire leadership team by inviting leaders across the organization to deliver relevant updates based on the agenda. And then don’t stop there. Employees want to hear and learn from their peers. Instead of having a senior leader deliver an update or a case study, consider having them facilitate a panel discussion with the employees who worked on the project.
• Change it up. While consistency can be key, if you are a company that has frequent town halls (say, every month), don’t be afraid to do one a little differently. Give the business updates a break and instead create an agenda that is solely focused on inspiring your employees. Bring the outside in – your customers, your patients, an inspirational speaker, etc. – who can energize, motivate and thank employees for everything they are doing to advance your company’s work. Taking a step back to reflect and reconnect to one another and the company’s mission will breathe new energy into the organization – read on to the following case study to see how we worked with one of our clients to do just so.

Town Hall Meeting Case Study: How One Organization Raised the Bar to Inspire

Beyond the Standard Town Hall: “A Dose of Inspiration”

Employees at a leading pharmaceutical company were change-weary from the volume and intensity of change over the past two years and, coupled with pandemic frustrations, feelings of uncertainty and anxiety were rising. We partnered with the communications team to create a reset moment for the organization called “A Dose of Inspiration,” during which the team came together to:

• Pause to acknowledge the changes and challenges
• Recognize and celebrate associates and milestones
• Re-center on their critical mission – transforming the lives of patients and their families
• Inspire associates about the future and their role in the company’s success

The event was not another town hall – the content was inspirationally toned and high level, versus focused on business updates. It featured both internal and external speakers who helped associates take stock of how they can find inspiration from their patients, one another and within.

Now in its second year, employees have called A Dose of Inspiration “the best [company] meeting to date” and “absolutely inspiring from start to finish.”

• 78% reported feeling more connected to the company’s mission
• 80% said they were “completely” inspired

With thoughtful planning and careful execution, town halls are an incredible internal communications platform to engage your workforce and make a real, lasting impact on your company’s business goals. But, we know that implementing a new way of communicating – whether it’s introducing town halls altogether or shifting how they’ve always been done – can be daunting.

You might be asking yourself, where do I start or how will I get buy-in from leadership on this approach?

We can help! We partner with organizations of all sizes to transform how they communicate internally and reach and engage employees through effective town halls. We love putting our experience to use as we partner with communications teams to make the workplace better, and help leaders show up in an authentic way. If you’d like help, reach out . We’d be delighted to partner.

We also have a new eBook, 10 Ways to Make the Most of Your Town Hall and Unleash the Power of your Hybrid Teams , that’s designed to help get you started.

Download your free copy here .

How will transforming your town halls into must-attend events help you drive employee engagement and your desired business outcomes?

—Jennifer Hirsch

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The Ultimate Guide to Better Virtual Town Hall Meetings in 2024

Town hall meetings or all-hands meetings are a regular fixture at most organizations. It is one of the most effective ways to share company updates and promote a dialog between leadership and staff. But like many company events, town halls remain largely virtual in a post-pandemic world.

With over 28% of employees working from home in a fully remote or hybrid work model, organizational alignment with work arrangements is critical. Though most organizations have been hosting virtual town halls on a weekly or monthly basis, engagement rates are still a cause for concern.

Fatigue on Zoom and other video-conferencing platforms afflicts around 37% of employees , creating a lackluster trend in engagement during virtual meetings. Additionally, the long monologues during virtual town halls further contribute to the downward spiral of employee engagement.

However, a virtual town hall doesn’t have to be a mundane, tedious source of facts and figures. This in-depth guide offers steps, frameworks, and ideas to help you supercharge your virtual town halls — bolstering company culture and creating company-wide excitement for the event.

How Often Should I do a Virtual Town Hall?

We recommend holding a virtual town hall weekly or monthly. Ultimately, the choice will depend on a few considerations:

• Size of the company: For large companies, communication is harder, and the repetition of vision, goals, and figures is integral. However, 100s or 1000s of employees joining an hour-long weekly meeting creates budgetary and logistical nightmares. Ensure the agenda is well constructed, valuable, and worth employees' time.
• Speed of company: If your company is going through a period of rapid change or expansion, hold town hall meetings weekly. This way, team members get updates on initiatives, functionality, and internal communications more rapidly, allowing the company to move faster.
• Time of year: If your company is subject to seasonality, town hall meetings during slow periods make little sense. Wait until the busy season to do a virtual town hall, and update the slow season with daily updates in short written bullet form.

The Perfect Day and Time To Hold a Virtual Town Hall

Ultimately, the best time to hold a virtual town hall is when most of your company is available. Try sending live polls with several options for people to choose from. After talking to 1000s of high-performing companies, here are a few options we recommend:

• Friday at 4 pm: This is one of the most common times to host a virtual town hall, ending the week on a high note. However, some remote employees may be unable to attend at this time (especially if they need to pick up their kids from school).
• Thursday at 4 pm: This is a great time to host the town hall as it allows people to finish the week without feeling overwhelmed on Fridays by either personal or professional pursuits.
• Thursday at noon: This is when we hold our virtual town hall at Hoppier . We found it was the best choice for team members with kids or those who have a busy social life.
• Monday at noon: This is an interesting choice because it allows teams to focus more on what they will accomplish in the upcoming week rather than what already happened.

How to Plan a Virtual Town Hall Meeting

Now that you have a realistic idea of the frequency, date, and time of your virtual town hall, you can enter the preparation phase. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of planning your next town hall meeting.

1. Pre-Planning Considerations

A virtual town hall meeting can eat up a significant part of the workday, so you want to ensure that it runs as smoothly as possible. Here are our four tips to get you started:

• Decide on the technology: Shortlist the set of applications or virtual event platforms you will use to live stream the virtual town hall meeting. Ideally, you need a video conferencing app, screen-sharing software, a chat messenger app, and a poll app. Platforms like Hopin, Livestorm, Brightcove, Microsoft Stream, and Pigeonhole Live condense all these features in a single suite.
• Take a headcount: Find out the exact number of employees attending the meeting to help you plan the agenda and any team-building sessions accordingly.
• Be mindful of different time zones: If your organization has a distributed team across multiple countries, pick a time that works for everyone and/or record the meeting.
• Build a team: Having a moderator, MC, and/or tech personnel during the session is always helpful. The moderator will queue in employee questions and facilitate the session. The IT staff will ensure that all your employees can participate without any issues.

2. Define the Meeting Objective

Every town hall meeting should have a key objective. The objective defines the purpose of the meeting. Some things to consider might include:

• Have you recently released any new product features?
• What are the monthly or quarterly sales updates?
• Is the company going through a pivot?
• Did you add anyone to your leadership team or supporting staff?
• Are you expanding your company goals to accommodate expansion or new products?

The objective helps you prepare the agenda, the presentation, and the speakers at the meeting. For example, if the company is set to change its strategic direction, the CEO is the best person to lead the session. On the other hand, top-level sales executives are the best option for sales-related matters.

Apart from these specific goals, you can also focus on “softer” goals like motivating employees, building trust, and fostering a sense of community.

3. Plan the Meeting Agenda

With the key objective(s) in mind, hash out the topics that management will discuss during the meeting. Rather than including an overwhelming number of themes, pick a handful of topics that complement the objective.

Having functional leaders’ and managers’ inputs on key issues is helpful, as they’re more likely to understand what’s on employees’ minds.

An example virtual town hall meeting agenda could look like this:

• Introduction and icebreakers: 10 minutes
• Quick update on sales and marketing results: 5 minutes
• Key product features launching this week or month and where to learn more about them: 15 minutes
• Q&A session or share periodic “wins & losses”: 20 minutes
• Monthly celebrations and milestones: 10 minutes

4. Prepare Your Content

Keep your presentation crisp. Don't reference past information that employees already know. Instead, focus on helpful or pertinent information. Strip the language/concept down to its bare bones so that everyone on the team gets it. To simplify a complex topic, invite a subject matter expert or the department head from the respective team to speak with you.

Then, encourage the attendees to ask questions. You can work with the moderator to create a series of questions or polls. Use video, audio, and other visuals to make your content compelling and memorable.

You can also use quizzes or other fun activities to engage your employees , provided you have the extra time.

5. Send Meeting Invitations to Employees

Tell your employees about the town hall meeting via calendar invitation, email, and a messaging app like Slack or Microsoft Teams. The calendar invitation should contain the following:

• Agenda: The meeting itinerary should answer questions like the date and time, meeting objectives, who will lead the meeting, speaker line-up, team-building activities, etc.
• Meeting Rules: Similar to webinars or virtual breakout rooms, virtual town halls can get chaotic and difficult to manage as the number of attendees increases. Lay clear ground rules on the start time, muting the mic when not speaking, and how or when to ask questions during the session.
• FAQs: This section should answer questions such as how to join the meeting, use the meeting software app, troubleshoot basic technical errors, who to contact for technical support, etc. You can create an internal wiki page for this and link it in the calendar invitation so that it’s easy to refer to.

6. Invite Questions In Advance

Ask your employees to send questions in advance. The presenter ideally covers these questions during the presentation so that the Q&A session is open for impromptu participation — not just a recap of the virtual town hall.

7. Perform a Technical Dry Run

The day before the virtual town hall, set up the meeting software, chat app, and event tools. Perform a thorough tech check, ensuring the software, connectivity, and equipment are working properly. Develop a contingency plan for potential technical errors and minimize disruption.

8. Welcome Your Attendees

Keeping the audience engaged in virtual meetings is always a challenge. Therefore, acknowledge your employees when they join in with a shout-out. Virtual icebreakers are a great way to welcome them.

During the session, let them voice their opinions without any hesitation. Involve them in the session through polls, questions, and feedback to make future virtual town hall meetings more engaging and informative.

9. Send a Recap

Record the town hall meeting and make it accessible to everyone in the organization, as not everyone can attend. Along with the recording, send the meeting minutes to share a glimpse of the discussions during the session. We recommend setting up a page to host all past recordings and minutes using Notion and one of their templates .

Also, ask for post-meeting feedback in a poll to learn how employees feel about the topics and the virtual town hall experience . You can ask questions confirming their understanding of a topic discussed or general feedback. We recommend always asking 3 simple questions:

• What did you enjoy?
• What did you dislike?
• What could have been improved?

Take this info and analyze how you can improve future meetings or follow-ups.

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10 Ideas to Make Your Virtual Town Hall Meetings More Engaging in 2024

1. Make Your Icebreakers Better

Some of the conventional icebreakers for virtual meetings include emoji check-ins, or asking a fun random question (like, is cereal soup? Why or why not?). You can also get to know new employees via two truths and a lie and rapid-fire.

2. Create an Exclusive Talk Space (Channel) for the Meeting

Not everyone can speak during the meeting, but that doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to the session. For instance, if you are using Slack, create a channel exclusively for real-time town hall meeting discussions.

If you aren't using a consolidated virtual meeting platform, these talk spaces or groups can centralize all the town hall-related discussions. Attendees can share key takeaways, pose questions, or simply drop emojis to share an emotion.

3. Food and Drinks, Anyone?

A great way to get people engaged is for them to have food and drinks. Use Hoppier as an easy way to send a virtual credit card that can be restricted to purchasing from food delivery apps and local restaurants worldwide.

4. Monthly Rewards and Holiday Allowances

Reward top performers with a Hoppier card when you are celebrating monthly wins. Similarly, with regard to holidays , you can allocate a budget for each employee to order food, beverages, gifts, and more.

American entrepreneur, investor, and podcaster, Tim Ferriss asks his guests about their most impactful purchases under $100. You can ask employees to spend a certain amount of allowance to purchase important things. Discuss these purchases and their rationale during the team-building session to learn more about your employees’ personal goals and aspirations.

5. Use Atlassian’s My User Manual to Know New Employees

Everyone has a different way of working. Some prefer to riff things over a phone call, while others may prefer email. Knowing how one works helps teams work productively.

This is why Atlassian (parent company of tools like Trello and Jira) has created My User Manual to let employees communicate their working styles.

During each all-hands meeting, you can invite new employees to share their manuals with the team (for smaller teams). Working on a distributed team doesn’t provide enough opportunities to get to know your teammates really well. Therefore, the user manual can address the following aspects:

• Working hours (including time zone)
• Preferred communication mediums
• Necessary tools and technologies
• Learning styles
• Preferred way of giving and receiving feedback

6. Celebrate Virtual Birthdays

If you work on a large team, celebrating birthdays once a month is easier when working virtually. Apart from the Hoppier cards, the company can deliver cakes to birthday honorees. Or you can play virtual party games such as a scavenger hunt or birthday trivia about that employee. It’s just another way to make your virtual town hall that much more engaging.

7. Host Virtual Trivia

Virtual team trivia is an exciting game to engage teams through healthy competition. In team trivia, employees are grouped into multiple teams. Based on consensus, you can pick the category for the game, such as music, movies, genres, TV shows, and sports.

Besides the typical trivia-esque questions, you can make the session more interesting by using rich media. Here are a few examples of interesting trivia questions:

• Guess the 5-second song clip
• Complete the song lyrics
• Guess the movie by its dialog or complete the dialog

Apart from tools like Typeform or SurveyMonkey, try apps like TriviaMaker or QuizWitz to design your own trivia.

8. Curated Online Tasting Sessions

Online cheese, wine, coffee, or chocolate tasting sessions are led by respective experts who guide you through the tasting process. You can send employees a Hoppier card and an ingredient list before the meeting to make a 007 James Bond martini or assorted cheese/wine/coffee/chocolates along with notes and recommended food pairings.

During the tasting session, an expert will discuss how these items are prepared, how to taste them, and how to develop the tongue of an expert mixologist or sommelier. The expert or your moderator can also host a few fun games around the tasting experience to make it more memorable.

9. Cooking Challenges and Workshops

For cooking challenges, let your team members choose ingredients and prepare a dish using only those selected — much like Iron Chef. Reward team members who come up with the most creative entry.

Another way you can include cooking in your sessions is through workshops. Although these sessions usually run for over an hour, they can drastically improve team dynamics. You can plan a quarterly workshop and get the ingredients delivered, and a professional chef or an expert can guide employees through the preparation.

10. Schedule Live Performances

Performances can transform the virtual meeting experience into one that employees talk about for months or years into the future. Work with a local performer or talent agency to do the heavy lifting for you. Whether you want a musician, magician, stand-up comedy, or some other form of live entertainment. The added benefit of these performances is that you can also plan for a virtual meet and greet where the artist interacts with employees one-on-one.

Another way to go about live performances is an open mic session. Encourage team members to let their inner artist shine during the open mic. Allocate five to 10 minutes for each person to perform a song, play a short acoustic set, make a few zingers with a stand-up bit, or recite poetry. Open-mic sessions allow team members to showcase their hidden talents.

Deconstructing the Virtual Town Hall

Regardless of whether you plan to begin hosting virtual town halls or have been holding them regularly, structuring these meetings is key to better engagement and outcomes. Follow these steps to improve the structure of your virtual town hall.

Kick-Off the Meeting With Some Icebreakers

Kick off the Meeting With Some Icebreakers

Start the meeting with some light banter and fun. As the leader or head of HR, the first few minutes will help you connect with your remote team personally. Icebreakers are great to set the mood for the meeting – particularly town halls, where you want your employees to feel comfortable sharing and contributing.

You can spend ten minutes warming up. Take a quick mood poll (anonymous survey), run a Zoom background challenge, or do a home treasure hunt to get everyone involved.

Next come the company and business updates. At most organizations, the CEO kicks off the meeting and delivers important company updates. While hearing your leader is motivating, having them speak for the entire virtual town hall can quickly become boring.

Employees want to feel included in the meeting, and having their managers/bosses/leaders represent them and talk about their work is a great way to accomplish that. Invite project leads, line managers, and other leaders to get involved in planning and delivering your town hall meeting.

You might also want to consider a professional emcee to host your virtual town hall. This ensures that everyone gets a chance to contribute to the meeting. This session is usually longer and takes up about 70% of the entire meeting duration. It can last from 20 to 40 minutes.

3. Celebrations and Team Building

Once you’ve wrapped up the formal sessions, you can then focus on celebrating employee achievements. Celebrating work anniversaries, client wins, and even short awards ceremonies will promote a sense of belonging and develop a high-performance culture . How you celebrate your employees and show your appreciation is completely up to you. Hoppier’s virtual cards make it easy to provide virtual rewards and show appreciation to your employees.

Next, incorporate some team-building activities or create breakout teams to let employees connect with each other.

Over to You

Virtual town hall meetings are not just about company updates. They’re also an effective platform for recognizing and celebrating employee achievements. Use the step-by-step activities listed above to plan an engaging virtual town hall meeting and experiment with ideas to make your sessions more interactive and experiential.

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Creating Engaging Town Hall Meeting Presentation in PowerPoint

Last Updated on July 4, 2023 by Anastasia

Are you looking to effectively provide updates, share information, and facilitate engaging communication with your employees during a town hall meeting presentation? As part of that, it’s essential to present updates and deliver presentations in an engaging manner. To assist you with this topic, I have prepared a few slide examples that you can incorporate into your presentation.

Let me inspire you with visual PowerPoint slides examples of company Town Hall meeting presentation: 

• explaining what’s town hall meeting about
• presenting a team growth 
• visualizing the key achievements and milestones on a roadmap
• presenting creatively the mission, vision, and values statement
• visualizing the data on a dashboard

Get all the graphics presented here – click on the slide pictures to see and download the source illustration. Check the full Town Hall All-hands Meeting Presentation .

What is the town hall meeting ?

The town hall meetings, also known as “all-hands” meetings, are gatherings where the team can hear the news, discuss challenges, stay informed, and offer ideas. They are an opportunity for employees and leadership to come together as a team, engage in open conversation, and share updates, successes, and any queries that have cropped up along the way.

In case you have newcomers at your meeting, you may want to present such definitions creatively on a slide. I prefer using a two-column template to present such definitions. This allows for a combination of text and graphics. In the example above, I used a gradient background and icons, but a photo can also represent the graphical component.

Presenting a team growth graphically

When you want to talk about team growth this topic can include such focus areas: 

• new benefits for your employees
• work-life balance support
• personal development or PDP support activities
• team building events
• other empowerment of your team

To illustrate these areas, you can use a growing plant metaphor. Take a look at the slide below.

Each area of the team’s development is illustrated with a plant’s growth from a seed to a flower. To further highlight the stages, each of them is enclosed within a text box and assigned a specific color. It is important to arrange the boxes evenly on the slide to maintain a balanced layout.

If you’re about to focus more on business growth strategy and your plan for increasing your company’s markets and revenues, check out our blog .

Why use a roadmap to present the key achievements and milestones

Utilizing a roadmap visualization aids in enhancing the audience’s understanding of key milestones along the path to success and effectively communicates the implementation of new procedures.

To create such a slide, I used shapes available in PowerPoint such as rectangles, circles, and chevrons. Each number on the roadmap is assigned to an appropriate box, which includes a description and a flag symbol to create an association with targets along a road.

How to present the mission, vision, and values statement creatively

It may be worth reminding the core values and directions in your town hall meeting presentation. 

Simply covering a slide with plain text to explain your company’s vision, mission, and values can be dull and difficult to remember. It is better to create visually interesting shapes that capture the audience’s attention. In order to emphasize the significance of unlocking the full potential of our core values, I have used a key symbolism. Furthermore, each statement is enriched with a specific icon to enhance the slide’s relevance.

• a bulb for a vision statement
• a top of a hill for a mission statement
• a hand with a star for a values statement

Visualizing the data on a dashboard

It’s highly likely that you will need to present data during the town hall meeting. However, it’s important to avoid boring your audience with dry numbers. To make the data more engaging, I have created a two-column dashboard slide to effectively present sales-related information.

The left column displays data using bar charts, with arrow icons highlighting monthly increases and decreases. The downward red arrow represents a decrease, while the upward green arrow symbolizes growth. On the right side, I have included a donut chart, which is similar to a pie chart but more visually appealing due to its ring shape (allowing for a representative icon in the center). The pie chart is color-coded, making it easy to identify each category assigned to it.

If you need to squeeze much data into one slide, see how data dashboards can help to illustrate data reports.

Making Town Hall Meeting Presentation Visually Engaging – What to Keep in Mind

Because town hall meeting is so important event, presenting it requires engaging and visually appealing slides to captivate your audience. Just keep in mind a few rules from our graphic designers:

• incorporate creative visual aids instead of relying on plain text
• go beyond simple slide layout, try arranging content into more columns to use the full space of the slide 
• elegant gradient backgrounds, photos, and icons can convey information in a visually engaging manner
• draw attention to significant aspects of your message with icons or arrow indicators
• arrange data into a clear dashboard chart layout to present information in a readable and attractive manner

I’m convinced that by incorporating these creative ideas and design tips into your slides, you can elevate the impact and engagement of your town hall meeting presentation.

Resource: Company Town Hall Meeting Presentation PowerPoint Template

In the examples above I used the graphics from a PowerPoint template with Town Hall Meeting concept visuals. You can check all source slides in the infoDiagram collection of presentation graphics:

Company Town Hall Meeting Presentation

If you want to include multiple data charts and KPIs in your presentation deck, extend your town hall meeting presentation with data dashboard layouts .

• Investor Day
• Investor Overview
• Quarterly Earnings
• Cat Man & Insights
• Town Hall Presentations

Town Hall Presentation Design

Town Hall meetings are more critical than ever:

• 85% of employees aren’t engaged in their daily work.
• 87% want more transparency in the workplace.
• Up to 95% of employees aren’t aware of your company’s strategy.

Town Halls address all of these. They’re a vital step toward aligning the company, keeping morale high, and developing company culture.

Town Hall meetings are important for letting your company’s leadership communicate with employees, and they’re just as important for letting employees communicate with the management team.

But to get maximum value out of your Town Hall, it’s important to design a presentation that holds the interest of employees, fosters company-wide engagement, and energizes the organization for the quarter ahead.

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From Our Valued Clients​

“With OUTKREATE, you have a great thinking partner who can quickly refine presentation strategy and design. Every time, they come back with something even better than what I could have asked for myself.”

"I've worked with multiple creative agencies in my marketing career. We engaged OUTKREATE to develop Verra Mobility's Corporate Narrative presentation. They collaborated like a true strategic advisor, and not as any order-taking design agency. The result was we got a presentation that solved our pressing needs versus just pretty slides."

“OUTKREATE has been a critical resource for marketing and corporate communication teams in building presentations, internal sell stories, videos and other creative assets to help tell effective stories. Harry’s team knows Ferrara and helps synthesize our story through effective communication and works FAST!”

Hosting a successful Town Hall conversation

It’s easy for the C-suite and senior leadership of large organizations to get lost in jargon. Avoiding jargon is your path to a successful Town Hall conversation. Your employees’ attention is fickle–especially if they’re attending virtually–and a death-by-slides presentation full of corporate mumbo-jumbo won’t cut it.

The opportunity of Town Hall conversations is to serve as an ongoing change management forum. Employees are on the front lines of the business, and can surface opportunities and risks you didn’t know existed. They can also take your company’s strategy from idea to reality.

But none of that happens if you don’t connect with employees on an emotional level. Focus on simplified messaging and visual storytelling, and deliver your presentation with a conversational tone. By doing so, you can engage employees, helping them be more receptive to your messaging, and encourage them to share their own thoughts.

Tips for Town Hall Presentation Design

Town Hall presentations often suffer from:

• Text-heavy slides that make your audience tune out
• Boring content that doesn’t emotionally connect with your employees
• Presenters reading slide content (instead of voicing their ideas)

When employees are sitting through a presentation like this, it’s unlikely to have an impact on them. Instead, here’s what to do for engaging Town Hall:

Ideally, do this once a quarter–right after your quarterly earnings if you’re a public company.

Stick to company-wide town halls. If you still need a functional town hall, consider keeping it short. Avoid repeating content from your company-wide town hall.

Allow sufficient time for Q&A. Creating buffer time to get feedback from your employees is an important part of all-hands meetings, and also makes them more engaging.

The temptation is to err on the side of “more is better,” but do your best to distill your message to the fewest number of slides possible. That helps make the best use of time for everyone at your all employee meeting.

Presenters should expand on these ideas while speaking.

Include bold visuals to emotionally engage your audience and help them digest your message.

This helps the audience follow each of your talking points, instead of reading all the content on the slide.

Speakers should rehearse the presentation in slide show mode. Use humor, anecdotes, and simple, short sentences to connect with your audience. Stay within your allotted time.

Learn more about how we create impressive Corporate Communication Materials

To view samples of our work and our pricing structure, download the OUTKREATE IR Solutions Deck.

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Enhance visual design for a public CPG (consumer packaged goods) company’s company-wide town hall presentations.

The existing presentation was data-heavy and lacked visual interest, making it hard to understand. The client’s design team had little bandwidth and no specialized skills in presentation storytelling and design.

We took a “less is more” approach to content, eliminating text and data that wasn’t central to the messaging. We included only key points on each slide, allowing the speaker to expand with more details during the presentation. We converted data and text to graphics wherever possible, including screenshots, icons, charts, and images.

From a design perspective, the client’s brand wasn’t being used to its full potential. We redesigned the presentation using elements from the client’s brand identity, and used custom smart art and shapes to make each slide more attractive. We also improved the presentation’s user experience, making slides easier to understand by using visual hierarchy and optimal layouts.

After delivering several presentations, we created a Time-Saver Tool that allows the entire company to create high-caliber presentations on their own.

The client’s Corporate Communication team has received phenomenal feedback on this project, both on the quality of the visual storytelling and the effectiveness of the slides and messaging. Multiple groups across the organization ask for a copy of the slides after each Town Hall. Surveys show that employees are giving very positive feedback about the quality of the Town Hall.

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If so, right now is a good time to get ready. Let us help you upgrade your presentation’s structure, content, and design to help employees engage more and get clarity on your key messages.

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ZIPDO GUIDES

How To Run A Town Hall Meeting

To run a town hall meeting, prepare clear objectives, foster open communication and participation, and facilitate timely, constructive discussions while ensuring all voices are heard and all concerns are properly addressed.

• Steps in this Guide: 11
• Updated: March 11, 2024

A Town Hall Meeting is a community gathering where residents and local officials come together to discuss and address issues of concern in the town or city. It is an opportunity for people to express their opinions, ask questions, and provide feedback on various topics such as public safety, infrastructure, education, and more. Generally, town hall meetings are open forums that promote transparency and citizen engagement in local governance.

How To Run The Town Hall Meeting As A Manager: Step-By-Step

Next, we will share our step-by-step guidelines for running a Town Hall Meeting:

Step 1: Planning,

Step 2: choose topics,, step 3: assign roles,, step 4: develop an agenda,, step 5: send invitations,, step 6: create presentation content,, step 7: set up the venue,, step 8: conduct the meeting,, step 9: encourage engagement,, step 10: distribute meeting minutes or recap,, step 11: follow up,.

In addition to determining the purpose, scope, and scale of your town hall meeting, it is crucial to consider logistical aspects such as selecting a suitable date, time, venue, and platform, especially if the meeting will be held virtually, ensuring efficient communication and engagement with participants.

During the town hall meeting, carefully consider the topics that need to be addressed, whether they are company-wide concerns, important updates, or any changes that impact all participants.

In order to ensure a well-executed town hall meeting, it is important to identify key staff members who will be responsible for specific roles such as facilitating discussions, delivering presentations, managing time, and providing technical support.

The meeting will begin with a welcome and introductions, followed by updates from each department head. The main topic of discussion will be the new marketing campaign, with 20 minutes allotted for brainstorming ideas. The meeting will conclude with a summary and next steps.

ZipDo, our software, transforms your calendar meetings into collaborative workspaces. Here, your team can jointly prepare a shared agenda, making sure all relevant topics are covered. This approach significantly improves meeting preparedness and efficiency, streamlining both the lead-up to and the wrap-up of meetings.

With ZipDo, you ensure that meetings are prepared and followed up in writing in a central, collaborative location. This has an impact on the productivity of the entire team or even the entire organization

Utilize calendar invitations to efficiently notify employees, stakeholders, or community members by providing essential details such as date, time, venue or virtual meeting link, along with the agenda for the scheduled meeting.

In order to captivate your audience, it is essential to create captivating and concise content for your presentation. Utilize visuals as needed to enhance understanding and facilitate engagement.

In order to facilitate a successful meeting, it is crucial to ensure that the chosen venue, whether physical or virtual, is fully equipped with the necessary technical tools and amenities, such as projectors, sound systems, and a reliable internet connection.

Stick to the agenda, maintain discussion control, cover all planned elements, and address questions.

To create a more interactive and engaging environment during and after presentations, it is important to actively solicit questions, comments, or suggestions from attendees, fostering meaningful dialogue and promoting active participation.

After the meeting, it is crucial to send a concise recap or minutes highlighting the essential subjects covered and the conclusions reached during the meeting. This ensures everyone remains informed and aligns with the outcomes.

Tracking assigned action items or tasks from the town hall meeting is essential for ensuring productivity. Monitoring their progress allows for accountability and ensures that necessary actions are being taken.

Exemplary Template

Some topics that should be discussed on a town hall meeting include community safety, local infrastructure improvements, education, healthcare access, environmental sustainability, economic development, and citizen engagement. It is important to address issues that directly impact the community and involve its residents in decision-making processes.

Running a successful town hall meeting is not only a vital component of effective governance but also a powerful way to engage with the community and foster open dialogue. Whether you are a local government official, a community leader, or an organization aiming to connect with your stakeholders, mastering the art of hosting a town hall meeting is essential. In this blog post, we will explore the key principles and practical strategies that can help you navigate the challenges and achieve positive outcomes while leading a town hall meeting. From setting clear objectives to managing participation and ensuring inclusivity, let’s dive into the world of town hall meetings and discover how to make them a productive and impactful platform for community engagement.

A Town Hall Meeting is a public meeting where community members gather to discuss local issues, voice concerns, and engage directly with public officials or corporate management. It is a platform where everyone is given an opportunity to openly ask questions or express opinions.

Town Hall Meetings are generally open to all members of a community, employees of a company, or members of an organization depending on the purpose of the meeting. They ensure inclusivity and promote the principles of democracy, as everyone is given an equal chance to participate and voice their concerns or opinions.

Typically, a Town Hall Meeting begins with a brief presentation by the organizer or presenter, followed by a question and answer session where attendees can voice their concerns, opinions, or ask questions. The purpose is to engage in an open dialogue about specific issues or topics relevant to the community or organization.

You can participate in a Town Hall Meeting by attending the meeting in person or virtually, depending on the format. Participation can range from asking questions, expressing concerns, giving suggestions, or simply attending to stay informed about the issues being discussed.

Town Hall Meetings are important as they promote transparency and inclusivity. They offer a public forum for dialogue between leaders and community members or employees, leading to stronger relationships, better decision-making, and a more informed community. They can also lead to collaborative problem-solving and create a sense of community cohesiveness.

Step-by-Step: How To Run A Town Hall Meeting

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Usage example

Description, how to edit.

Do you need to present your company's business update at the meeting with your employees engagingly? Use our pre-designed Townhall Meeting deck that allows you to convey your message attractively and increases the involvement and participation of your audience.

This Company Town Hall Meeting template contains slides with the following:

• 53 diagrams illustrating various issues related to all-hands meetings
• 95 illustrating town hall meeting topics: Rating, Communication, Sales, Finance, Employees, Strategy, Economy, and General
• Instruction on modifying those diagrams using standard PowerPoint editing tools.

Authors of this Company Town Hall Meeting template

• Content advisory by Katarzyna Podlejska, Senior Consultant Contact Katarzyna
• Design by infoDiagram designer Contact infoDiagram

What is the purpose of the Town Hall Meeting?

At a company town hall meeting, employees gather to hear from senior leaders and managers about the company's state, vision, mission, goals, and achievements. It is an opportunity for employees to ask questions, share feedback, and engage with the leadership team in a two-way conversation.

Why do town hall presentations?

Town hall meeting is the best opportunity for you to gather your entire team to keep people updated on important information related to your strategy and the state of business. For such a more extensive meeting having a clear and attractive presentation with vivid visual aids is an essential part of efficient communication. Regular all-hands meetings provide a great way to reinforce the organization's culture and values and stimulate the employees to share their feedback.

Make your ideas easy to understand using graphs and infographic elements, and tailor them to your needs to upgrade your presentation slides. We include detailed instructions on how to alter the content, values, colors, and look and feel of the charts applied.

Where can you use the Town Hall PowerPoint template?

Using PowerPoint for making visual slides with infographics and chart graphs will help you organize information and present your ideas in an eye-catching and attractive format.

• Present your meeting rules and agenda with self-explanatory appealing icons
• Start with inspiring slides showing your company's focus on people - celebrating successes, presenting employees feedback and initiatives related to human resources
• Remind your team about the company's mission, vision, and values highlighting the most important elements
• Create an attractive overview of your main strategic goals in the format of a summary
• Illustrate 5 years roadmap set to achieve your company's global ambitions
• Visualize the current fulfillment of the global targets using key achievements summary
• Address your ESG sustainability strategy, including environmental, social, and governance elements, highlighting YTD performance
• Show your company's current state of business, using 6 or 8 elements templates that include main areas impacting profitability
• Visualize your key achievements using an attractive milestones roadmap
• Share your revenue and profit data so that your team knows your company's financial results
• Explain your top-line growth in an easy-to-understand dashboard format using column or stacked editable charts
• Be proud of your successes and celebrate them with your team using pre-design appealing visualizations
• Give your leaders a voice, let them present their respective areas providing business updates and upcoming activities in various creative slide layouts prepared for you
• Impress your audience with next year/period outlook slides that let the employees remember easily how your business is expected to grow in the future
• Finish your meeting with the main takeaways presented in a memorable lighthouse concept diagram

Try using those PowerPoint graphics to present your data visually in an elegant way.

All graphics are editable to modify the size, colors, and text. Also, you can extend the collection further with more PPT symbols (see Related Diagrams section).

• Replace icons
• Change the filling and outline color
• Modify size and proportions
• Rotate, flip, align, and change order

Slides included in this PowerPoint Presentation:

• Topics of Townhall Meeting Deck
• Townhall Meeting Definition
• Townhall Meeting Opening
• Townhall Meeting Rules of Conduct
• Townhall Meeting Agenda
• Introduction to Company Townhall Meeting
• Celebrations – Our People Are Our Greatest Assets
• Your Voice – Your Feedback Matters
• Announcements – We Grow Because You Grow
• Global Strategy Follow-up Section
• Mission, Vision, and Values Statements
• Strategic Goals Overview
• Strategic Plan – Our Five Year Roadmap
• Key Global Directions to Our Success
• ESG Sustainability Targets Overview Template
• 20XX Sustainability Highlights and KPIs
• Business Update Section
• Company Status At-A-Glance KPI Overview
• Current State of Business Overview
• Key Achievements and Milestones Roadmap
• YTD Financial Results Section
• Revenue and Profit Snapshot Dashboard
• Revenue Highlights All-hands Dashboard
• Top Line Key Growth Drivers Overview
• Financial Summary Budget vs Actual Overview Table
• Key Successes Section
• Successful Products Launches
• Impressive Gain on Followers on Social Media
• Best Employers of 20XX
• Business Updates by Departments Section
• Business Updates by Our Management Team
• Business Updates in Sales
• Sales Overview
• Leads Conversion Funnel
• Leads Conversion Analysis
• Business Updates in Marketing, Townhall Meeting
• Marketing Overview KPI Dashboard
• Marketing Investment KPI Dashboard
• Upcoming Marketing Initiatives
• Business Updates in Human Resources
• HR Overview All-team Dashboard
• Employees Efficiency All-team Dashboards
• Employees as Valuable Company Asset
• Business Updates in Project Management
• Project Portfolio Overview
• Projects Initiatives for 20XX
• Upcoming Projects Quarterly Plan Overview
• Business Growth Outlook
• Key Growth Drivers for 20XX
• Next Year Business Growth Outlook
• Town Hall Meeting Roundup
• Main Meeting Takeaways
• Questions and Answers
• How to Use & Edit These PPT Graphics
• Modifying shapes in PowerPoint
• Editing outline icons in PowerPoint
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Rating
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Communication
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Sales
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Finance
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Employees
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Strategy
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – Economy
• Townhall Meeting Outline Icons Set – General

How to edit text & colors

How to expand / shorten diagram

How to Replace Icons in infoDiagram PPT

Company Town Hall Meeting Presentation (PPT Template)

Home Collections Strategy / Business Plan Agenda Town Hall Presentation

Town Hall PowerPoint Presentation and Google Slides

Townhall Presentation Slide

A town hall presentation is a meeting that brings together employees and management to discuss company updates and goals. To engage employees during a town hall, it's important to use interactive elements such as polls, Q&A sessions, and live feedback. Additionally, personal stories and recognition of employee contributions can make employees feel valued and connected to the company's mission. This Slide is exclusively made of professional designs and has five nodes. Utilizing the resources properly you can present company updates, share key accomplishments and challenges, discuss future plans, and provide a platform for Q&A.

Features of the template:

• You can use this in Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.
• This slide contains .16:9 and 4:3 format.
• It is a well-crafted template with an instant download facility.
• The best PowerPoint theme template.
• It is a well-designed presentation template.
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Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams

Deliver high-quality presentations and large-scale events with town hall in Microsoft Teams. Town hall features are optimized for sharing content across large audiences. Host company-wide reviews, provide coverage for live events, and more.

What is a town hall?

A town hall is a type of meeting available in Microsoft Teams. Whether you’re celebrating milestone achievements with your org or covering an election, town hall features help you deliver high-quality production experiences to large audiences.

Town halls can host up to 10,000 attendees or up to 20,000 attendees with Teams Premium. 

When to schedule a town hall

Schedule a town hall if:

You’re hosting a large-scale event.

You need high-quality content sharing or streaming capabilities.

The experience is mostly consumption-based for attendees.

You’re providing extensive coverage of an event (up to 30 hours).

Attendee experience

Town halls are a one-to-many experience. Focus stays primarily on presenters and shared content while attendees watch. By default, attendee cameras and mics will be turned off when they join a town hall. However, attendees can still engage through other apps and services, like Q&A , where they can post or respond to questions during the event. To learn more, see  Attend a town hall in Microsoft Teams .

Town hall features

Presenter spotlight.

Bring presenters to the forefront of the event with Manage what attendees see . Showcase up to seven presenters’ video feeds at once.

Translated captions 

Break down the language barrier during your town hall with live translated captions . Attendees with Teams Premium can choose from ten language translations; other attendees can choose from up to six.

Publish town hall recordings

After a town hall ends, you can download and publish the event recording to share with attendees. When you publish the recording, attendees will automatically receive an email with a link to the recording.

Attendee reports

Gain insights into your town hall with post-event attendee reports . See how many people attended, how long they attended, and other details.

What's next?

Attend a town hall in Microsoft Teams

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Awesome Employee Town Hall Presentation Template

Get the template Bananatag uses for our super engaging employee all hands meetings

Employee Town Hall meetings are an excellent way to engage employees and get everyone on the same page. Except when they don’t. So how do you make sure employees are paying attention, getting the information they need to do their jobs well, and feel connected to their colleagues and the organization? The first step is having a great Town Hall presentation design. How you present important information is one of the key components in making sure employees pay attention and get the message. That’s why we’ve decided to share our very own Town Hall Presentation Slide Deck Template with you! Our employees demand (and deserve) the very best, so we’re confident that this template will help you craft an awesome Town Hall Meeting.

• Create eye-catching, compelling slides that keep employees engaged
• Structure your presentation agenda to avoid information overload
• Pick content that inspires, connects, and aligns employees
• Present with purpose and confidence

Local News | Emotions run high at town hall on plan to…

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Local News | Emotions run high at town hall on plan to realign Baltimore’s Catholic churches: ‘This is a watershed moment’

If there were any doubts about how strongly local Catholics are feeling about the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s proposal to realign the church’s operations in the city, they were dispelled Thursday night as hundreds packed a pair of rooms at Archbishop Curley High School for a town hall-style meeting on the far-reaching reform plan church officials went public with this month.

Parishioners from across the city stepped up to a microphone in the school’s cafeteria — some angry, some wistful, a few on the verge of tears — to share their reactions to the proposal, a plan that would cut the number of parishes in the historically Catholic city and nearby suburbs from 61 to 21 and reduce the number of worship sites from 59 to 26.

The archdiocese first shared the proposal with city parishioners at Masses the weekend of April 13.

Several speakers decried the idea of their own church being shuttered. Others criticized how the multiyear reform initiative, called Seek the City to Come, has been conducted. Not a few suggested the archdiocese should spend its money on ministries, not consultants, or that its motives are more financial than spiritual.

What came through in the nearly three-hour meeting was that Baltimore’s Catholics, be they from Sandtown-Winchester or Mount Vernon, Dundalk or Edmondson Village, care deeply about the fate of their denomination in the city and are, at least at this stage, skeptical that the plan as proposed will save it.

Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski and the archdiocese’s director of community affairs, Geri Royale Byrd, co-directors of Seek the City, took the first half-hour of the meeting to stress the urgency of changing the church’s footprint in Baltimore at a time when attendance in the city’s pews has cratered and the cost of maintaining its historic buildings has grown exorbitant.

As they used a slide presentation to walk attendees through the outlines of the proposal, Byrd repeatedly stressed that it’s not final, that church officials had scheduled this meeting and three others to gather feedback that will be incorporated as the Seek the City team, which consists of more than 200 lay and clergy participants, revises and refines it in the coming weeks.

That didn’t stop parishioners from making impassioned pitches, expressing their fears or even denouncing the idea of reducing the presence of the Catholic Church in the city in the first place.

Black Catholics perceive echoes of neglect in church’s realignment proposal

“This is a watershed moment, and we do not have the luxury to get this wrong,” said James Conway, a parishioner at St. Wenceslaus, a predominantly African American congregation in East Baltimore. “You’re asking us to diminish the church, but you cannot diminish the spirit of the living God. And in that vein, that means that 21 parishes with 26 worship sites is not enough.”

Now more than 150 years old, St. Wenceslaus would be absorbed into a larger parish anchored by St. Francis Xavier if the proposal is approved.

John Petrick, a longtime member of St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans, said he believes Seek the City has focused too much on demographic research and not enough on understanding parish ministries.

The church would become absorbed into a parish anchored by the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

“I think what’s being missed in much of this process is the fact that parishes are not subunits of a larger corporation,” he said. “They’re communities. A community has its own organic life. And that life is something that evolves and grows and changes over time, not something that is easily captured in data, especially when those data are collected with questions that act as if parishes are service centers or franchises.”

Conway’s and Petrik’s remarks drew raucous applause, but the loudest cheers came when the evening’s youngest speaker said his piece.

Seek the City to Come proposal

The Seek the City to Come proposal would reorganize and relocate Catholic parishes in Baltimore City and some immediate suburbs to lower the number of parishes to 21 from 61 and the number of worship sites to 26 from 59.

Note: Two Baltimore City parishes that the Archdiocese of Baltimore says don’t currently have worship sites are not mapped. The Church of the Immaculate Conception would be in the Far Northwest Mosaic Parish with New All Saints (parish seat) and St. Cecilia. St. Pius V would be in the West Baltimore Radiating Parish with St. Bernardine (parish seat), St. Edward and St. Gregory the Great and St. Peter Claver.

Map: Steve Earley, Source: Archdiocese of Baltimore

Thomas Davis, 15, a student at Mount Saint Joseph High School, conceded that if any churches have to be closed, his home parish, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, is small enough to be a logical candidate.

But he was pointed in his critique of the archdiocese, which he accused of “taking my Catholic inheritance and selling it off to the highest bidder.”

“Aren’t Catholics supposed to serve the poor and lost? And are the majority of the poor and lost not in Baltimore? … The archdiocese that tells us we are supposed to perpetuate faith in our communities is stealing our places of worship like reverse Robin Hoods,” he said, and the room erupted in cheers.

Byrd and John Butler, a consultant working with the archdiocese on Seek the City who helped facilitate the gathering, stood beside the lectern and listened, eyes locked on each speaker. Lewandowski sat at a nearby table, also listening.

Catholics to attend Baltimore parish realignment town hall: ‘People are emotional’

The three sought throughout the evening to strike a balance between allowing parishioners to have their say and keeping the session moving, an effort that at times drew groans. The session had run nearly an hour over its scheduled time when Butler drew its formal part to a close.

Lewandowski then reminded attendees that two town halls on the proposal are scheduled for next week. The first, which will be conducted entirely in Spanish, will be held at 6:30 Monday evening at Our Lady of Fatima in East Baltimore. The archdiocese has announced that the second and final meeting — originally scheduled to take place at Mount Saint Joseph in Irvington, then at Our Lady of Victory in Southwest Baltimore — will be held at 6:30 Tuesday evening at the Cathedral of Mary of Our Queen in North Baltimore.

Lewandowski said both will be as important as Thursday’s gathering as his team refines the proposal, then delivers it to archdiocesan consultors and finally Archbishop William Lori for his approval. When Lori signs off on a final plan in June, it will mark the end of a two-year process that has included interviews, listening sessions, demographic research and visits to all 61 parishes.

Lewandowski stressed that the public sessions, however emotional, are integral to a process his team has designed to be conducted in a ground-up, not a top-down, manner.

“I think we’re hearing good constructive criticism,” he said. “We’re also hearing how painful this is. We just have to be in this with each other and work through it. These kinds of nights are helping us shape and reshape the plan. It’s beneficial.”

Hundreds in two locations at Archbishop Curley High School attend the Baltimore archdiocese’s first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on the "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city, including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Hundreds in two locations at Archbishop Curley High School attend the Baltimore archdiocese’s first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Betty Ciesla, of Baltimore’s St. Francis of Assisi Church asks a question during the first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Geri Royale Byrd, right, Director, Community & External Affairs / Seek The City To Come at Archdiocese of Baltimore, and co-director Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, left, hold the first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on the proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Geri Royale Byrd, left, Director, Community & External Affairs / Seek The City To Come at Archdiocese of Baltimore, tries to talk with Bob Reuters during the first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on the proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Bishop Bruce Lewandowski, third left, directs people to two locations at Archbishop Curley High School to attend the first gathering at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

A large contingent from the Holy Rosary Church say the rosary before the Archdiocese’s first meeting at which local Catholics can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

Catholics parishioners arrive at Archbishop Curley High School to attend the first gathering at which they can respond, emote, criticize and ask questions on "Seek the City to Come" campaign, a detailed proposal to radically realign church operations in the city including proposed church closures. (Kenneth K. Lam/Staff)

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