When all employees, supervisors, and stakeholders get together for a regular all-hands meeting to discuss important matters and company-wide issues. The phrase “all hands meeting” takes its name from the captain’s instruction for the entire ship’s crew to report to the deck when he/she needs all hands on deck for a crucial decision. These are also known as town hall meetings.

Why are All-Hands Meetings Important?

• Updates your team and makes it more aligned.

One of the best ways to ensure everyone on your team agrees to all the matters of your business is to hold an all-hands meeting. This extends beyond just disseminating personnel and organizational updates, which may be accomplished with significantly cheaper methods. All-hands meetings allow you to accurately align your staff on the company goals, leading them on the right path and ensuring success by emphasizing corporate mission, strategy, and objectives.

• Celebrates individuals while boosting team spirit and enthusiasm.

Without consistent effort from all sides, company accomplishments are unachievable. It’s equally crucial to acknowledge and celebrate your team members’ accomplishments as it is to keep them informed about company developments. One of the best methods to raise employee morale, especially when feeling overburdened or having low self-esteem, is to make them go through the successes of their endeavors and recognize the people who contributed to them. Engaging your staff in the acknowledgment process is a smart approach to achieving this. Ask employees to name one team member who has gone above and beyond for them or has demonstrated great performance over the past month or quarter. 

• Encourages a positive workplace culture.

The best time to demonstrate and develop your corporate culture is during All-hands meetings. It’s crucial to involve the attendees who are demonstrating your corporate culture. Allow them to participate in setting the agenda, developing the program, and organizing fun events. All-hands meetings are for your staff, so make sure they have a compelling reason to be there.  

• Connects CEOs with remote teams and employees.

While it’s hard to imagine company-wide in-person gatherings at the moment, it’s crucial to recognize the value of connectivity they offer. All-hands meetings offer a special opportunity to bring your remote employees closer to the corporate office and let them feel truly a part of the team. Some businesses even host their all-hands meetings entirely online because most, if not all, of their employees work remotely. Understanding the benefit of connectedness, they bring beyond the frequent virtual check-ins you might have with your team is crucial. We shall look into the best practices for holding all-hands meetings virtually later. 

• Gives everyone a voice.

An all-hands meeting is one of the finest venues to provide a platform for employee questions and address their issues from every angle. The most contentious issues within the company may be discovered by holding an open Q&A session with the leadership, promoting workplace transparency. Generally, allocate at least 20% of your all-hands conference to questions and answers. For executives and panelists to thoroughly prepare their responses ahead of time and have a basic idea of the areas of issues the employees would want to address; it may be beneficial to collect queries in the days preceding the meeting as well. 

Best Practices for Running All-Hands Meetings:

• Change things up.

It might be challenging for businesses already hosting regular all-hands meetings to avoid falling into the trap of having an hour-long speech from your leadership. While it’s crucial to prioritize leadership input, you should also make an effort to keep everyone in attendance interested and involved. 

• Attempt to be Interactive.

All-hands meetings that consist solely of someone addressing the group from the front part of the room for an hour won’t generate much engagement among the staff. Keeping the team involved is crucial, so look for novel ways to make your all-hands meetings more engaging. You can even have a small quiz presentation to make it interactive with attractive PowerPoint templates.

• Prepare Your Team.

The last thing you want to do during the scheduling process is stress your employees, especially if your company is not accustomed to holding regular all-hands meetings. Any all-hands meeting must be established beforehand as an unbiased event if it is to be successful. Include the all-hands agenda with the meeting invitations you send out, and clarify what will be covered. 

• All-Hands Meetings Must Be Short and On Time.

Having every employee in one place, especially for larger businesses, can be intimidating, especially when compared to the difficulty of keeping everyone engaged. To ensure that your all-hands meetings are productive and leave a lasting impact on your attendees, keep them as brief and to the point as possible. 

• Concentrate on the Correct Content.

Your main job is to keep the attendees of your all-hands meeting interested and present, but it may also be your toughest struggle if you spend too much time on the incorrect subjects. Aim to spend the majority of the day on the information that is pertinent and engaging to the entire firm, despite your inclination to give all the information about particular updates and initiatives. 

• Share achievements and growth prospects.

A wonderful technique is to include presenters from particular teams, but it’s crucial to emphasize transparency regarding the information they share with the rest of the organization. They’ll probably want to highlight their best work, and while all-hands meetings are one of the greatest places to celebrate achievements and give credit where credit is due. 

• Coordinate with your AV specialist.

Don’t be let down by technology. Before your all-hands meeting, coordinate with the AV person and make sure everyone is aware of the media you’ll be using (slides, audio, video) and any participatory activities you’ll be running.

• Bring the meeting to a close with specific action items.

Give your staff something concrete to take away from the all-hands meeting by concluding with a strong message. Prepare a summary slide with a key takeaway, or ask your CEO to list the key ideas and next actions.

• Engage in Feedback.

All-hand meetings are useless if your staff isn’t getting the value they require from them. The processes that ensure all-hand meetings remain effective are one of the most crucial elements, and employee feedback is the best source for this information.  

How do you determine whether your all-hands meeting was effective?

Use an anonymous survey to collect feedback from attendees to evaluate the effectiveness of your all-hands meeting and identify opportunities for additional participation.

To make data-driven choices that have an impact, if you’re using online platforms like Zoom or google meet, you can obtain detailed session analytics for enrollments, attendance, and involvement rates.

To sum up 

Regularly holding all-hands meetings can be the key to boosting your company’s performance. Now that you understand how to make the most of your meetings and get the most results, it’s time to start organizing for your next one.