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Published on June 2, 2022 • Updated on June 15, 2022 • About 9 min. read
Get started with Livestorm for free: host engaging meetings and events.
Sign up for freeThe shift to remote working means there are now no limits to accessing global talent, but it comes at a price.
It’s harder to create a sense of community and cohesion when employees only interact online, and keeping everyone on the same page is a challenge.
One solution is to hold a virtual town hall meeting. But what is it? And, how can you avoid contributing to “zoom fatigue” with yet another online meeting?
We reached out to our internal communications team to ask them:
Ready to find out? Let’s go.
A virtual town hall meeting is an online, company-wide event organized by upper management and featuring interactive elements like Q&As, live chat, and polls to boost employee engagement. It’s a corporate, online version of traditional town hall meetings, which allow citizens to interact with and put questions to authority figures.
The purpose of a town hall meeting is to keep employees working from home updated about company news, developments, and performance. And to nurture company culture and build community among remote teams.
Online town halls are similar to other business communications like an all-hands meeting in that they involve the whole company. However, all-hands meetings are generally more top-down and focused on conveying a message and/or giving a presentation. Virtual town hall meetings involve more two-way communication, interaction, and opportunities for employees to put questions to management.
Virtual town halls are an important part of many companies’ internal communications strategy and have several benefits:
Possible topics for a virtual town hall meeting include sharing industry and company news, setting long-term goals, discussing departmental progress, celebrating achievements, and introducing new employees.
Keep employees up to date with important developments in your industry or company. For example, expansions, acquisitions, new departments, hiring, or policy. Sharing KPIs, statistics, or financial results also promotes transparency and trust.
This is a good time to remind everyone of the company’s mission and vision, and what’s coming down the pipeline, and allows them to prepare and stay focused.
Remote teams may rarely interact, if ever. So this is a chance for them to hear from each other. This helps them understand other teams' objectives and challenges, which fosters empathy.
Celebrating company achievements fosters community, boosts morale, and motivates employees. Spotlighting individual high achievers makes them feel valued, and shows everyone that hard work is appreciated and recognized.
Putting a face to the name helps overcome the sense of disconnect that comes with online relationships. Sharing employee news like births, marriages, etc. (like they would in the office break room) makes people seem more human. The virtual town hall is also a good time to focus on employee wellbeing and let teams know you have their back if they’re struggling with workload, etc.
Here’s a sample employee town hall meeting agenda you can steal.
This step-by-step guide will keep you on track when organizing your virtual town hall meeting.
Remote teams spend a lot of time in virtual meetings, so engaging your audience is more important than ever.
Here’s how.
Set the tone at the start of the meeting with fun icebreakers that let them know this isn’t just another tedious, top-down meeting. Try asking employees to share something they love, announcing the results of company competitions, or holding a screen background challenge.
Try inviting an employee or guest to host the meeting, which makes a change from the same old management faces. It’s fun and motivating for employees to see one of their own “on the other side” and it should encourage them to join in.
People’s attention spans are shorter online, so keep sections short and content interesting or fun. Have a clear start and end to each section, and have breaks in long meetings. Moving around gets the blood flowing to the brain again and ensures employees come back fresh and ready to take part.
Break down barriers between employees and leadership with a segment where people can voice concerns and get answers from management. Make it clear that this is a safe space where employees can speak freely.
There’s nothing more motivating than getting a shout-out in front of the whole company, so you’re sure to have everyone’s full attention here. And for those who don’t get a mention, it gives them something to aim for next time.
Games, quizzes, and other fun activities are a great way to get people interacting and break up the monotony of listening to presentations. And a bit of healthy competition never did anyone any harm. Set up huddle rooms for teams to discuss and work together. And use gifs, fun visuals, and jokes to get people’s attention again after a presentation.
Virtual town halls are all about two-way communication, so use a platform like Livestorm with features that promote interaction. For example, huddle rooms to discuss in small groups; polls and surveys to gather feedback; and live chat for the Q&A. Allowing people to contribute at regular intervals boosts engagement and makes them feel heard. Reaction emojis also allow them to give feedback during talks instead of just passively listening.
Front-load the meeting with important stuff and there’s less incentive for employees to stay till the end. Roll out important announcements–like incentives, holidays, or bonuses–before wrapping to keep them engaged all the way through.
A high-quality virtual event platform should be the cornerstone of your internal communication software and tools stack.
There are several options for virtual town hall software, like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom. But they lack many engagement features and tend to require participants to have an account or install software, which is a barrier to participation.
Go for a browser-based video engagement platform like Livestorm instead that’s packed with features to keep people engaged–reaction emojis, polls and surveys, live chat, etc.
Best of all, it integrates with all the other tools you need for streamlined event management and hosting:
You can measure the success of your virtual town hall meeting by sending an anonymous survey to ask for feedback afterward. If you’re using Livestorm, you also get detailed analytics for registrations, attendance, participation, and interaction rates.
A virtual town hall meeting is a great way to build community and cohesion between remote teams. But you need to make it engaging and different from regular business meetings.
Get your teams interacting and involved, and combat screen fatigue with two-way communication, fun icebreakers and sections, and lots of opportunities to provide feedback and ask questions. All of which comes as part of the package when you use an interactive video engagement platform like Livestorm.
How often your company holds a town hall meeting will depend on how much news there is to share. However, a quarterly or monthly check-in is usually enough to keep everyone in the loop.
You can hold a virtual town hall meeting over Zoom, but its engagement features are limited and the need to download and install the software is a barrier to participation. Use a browser-based video engagement platform like Livestorm that comes with lots of engagement features instead.
For a virtual town hall meeting, you should prepare an agenda and presentations and set up an event page with a registration form. You may also want to include videos and visuals.
You can promote a virtual town hall meeting over your company’s internal communications channels, like Slack, email, or social media.
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"We were looking for a simple webinar software that was not over-engineered. If you do a side-by-side feature comparison, Livestorm competes very well with the other webinar players."
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