All-hands meetings, also known as town halls, are regular, company-wide gatherings where all employees and senior leadership team meet to discuss the most important company matters.
All-hands meetings can happen on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or a yearly basis and can differ in length of time from company to company. Due to the acceleration to working in the virtual, most companies are still operating their all-hands meetings in a virtual setting.
We have all been there, the email notification comes through for the company all-hands…
It is rare that employees actively jump with excitement when they see the email come through. When people hear or see the word “all-hands”, there can be an association with terminology such as “boring”, “uninspiring”, and “unorganized”.
From smaller and medium sized enterprises to global conglomerates, there is no ‘special sauce’ that will transform your all-hands meetings overnight. However, there are three fundamental principles that should be kept in mind: Interactivity, human connection, and organization. With these three principles keyed in, you will make not only your all-hands meetings more fun but also more engaging.
Interaction
A meeting without interaction can be compared to a meal without proper seasoning. It will fill you up, but it won’t really satisfy you.
Interaction is a key ingredient to a successful all-hands meeting. If you’re all-hands meeting isn’t successful, then you might be adding to the $37 billion wasted of unproductive meetings in the US economy.
Interaction is crucial due to several reasons. Not only does it provide individual benefits such as increased cognitive ability, and communication skills, but it also provides better company morale, job satisfaction and it can also help to reduce staff turnover.
However, when working in the virtual, being interactive can be a significant challenge. Not only is it close to impossible to see who you’re speaking to, but it is also close to impossible to make a virtual all-hands interactive using body language alone.
So how do we make our virtual all-hands meetings more interactive?
Polling, live Q&A, and emojis
Polling has been long accepted as a powerful tool to measure employee understanding and opinion for businesses. However, there hasn’t been any technology that has allowed polling to be efficient whilst an all-hands is active.
Jugo is perhaps the first platform that provides an all-in-one approach. Within our complete internal and external virtual meetings and events platform you can have polling, live Q&A’s as well as the use for emojis. Functionalities like these are important, because in a virtual world, technology needs to be innovated and utilized in a way that will heighten interactivity and make it all in all, fun.
Human Connection
Human connection is central to communication, whether that be in a corporate setting or a familial one.
Scientific research has revealed that by fueling our basic human psychological need for belonging, meaningful workplace connections drive many of the outcomes central to high-performing teams.
When you’re working in the office, human connection can simply be the friendly glance or wave across desks, the catchup coffee in the break room, or the social catchup at the end of a meeting. Yet, when working in the virtual it is difficult to create human connections let alone sustain them.
So… how can you drive human connection in your all-hands meeting? And how can you make your teams and employees feel truly connected?
1. Take the chance to introduce new team members
Nothing is worse than when someone talks at you for an hour or so with no break. So, it is important to separate content and business updates by making the people in your organization feel seen and heard.
When anyone joins a new business, it can be a daunting and scary time (trust me, I know). By introducing team members to the wider company, it provides an opportunity for them to feel special and welcomed into the team. It also acts as a catalyst for your employees to get to know each other more and it can help initiate friendly relationships within the business.
2. Use immersive technology to heighten communication through body language
As mentioned previously, it can be difficult to have genuine human connection in the virtual. When using 2-dimensional platforms, communicating using body language seems sometimes impossible.
Immersive technology, like Jugo, can help combat this. Using 3D technology, the human can be centered back into the middle of the conversation where it matters the most.
Humans aren’t mind readers, and body language assists us in understanding and decoding what any person is saying. Therefore, using a technology that drives this is vital.
3. Shout out employees that have worked hard and should be championed
Recognizing achievements, not just through job promotion or a yearly review is also another key factor when striving for a successful and engaging all-hands meeting.
Celebrating your staff for the little things matter such as hitting their KPIs’, doing charity work for the business, helping to support other members, or just even going above and beyond can really help drive a sense of community and purpose.
When people celebrate other people, people listen and during an all-hands meeting, that is exactly what you want. You want it to be fun, stimulating, engaging and fundamentally not boring.
Organization
Organization is another key pillar to having a fun and engaging all-hands meeting. Your team want to know that the meeting is going to be delivered with clear intention and meaning, and that their time isn’t going to be wasted. Employees, whether they’re the CEO or assistant, all have important jobs to do, and everyone’s time is valuable.
So, some top tips to making sure that your all-hands meeting is organized and well-structured:
- Create a clear agenda.
- Stick to the schedule.
- Be prepared and make sure your speakers are prepared.
- Don’t overcomplicate it and use jargon that everyone will know.
- Get your team leaders to follow up after the session with their smaller teams.
Virtual all-hands meetings don’t need to be tricky and chaotic. Using the pillars listed above, you can really transform your all-hands meeting from a boring and static one to one that is fun, interactive and engaging.
Jugo is an experiential platform for reimagining how people connect, collaborate, and create in the digital world. Want to find out how you could do your all-hands meeting on Jugo? Request a demo here and prepare to be immersed.
