Town hall meetings are an excellent way to gauge the needs, interests, and opinions of employees to improve the organization. Unlike a general meeting where the executive does most of the speaking, a town hall meeting is an open forum where employees can voice their questions, concerns, issues, and praise.
The ability to participate in decision making and offer feedback provides employees with a strong sense of community and ownership in the workplace, and most importantly, allows them to feel connected to their leadership.
While traditional town hall meetings were held in person, more and more organizations are relying on an enterprise video platform to broadcast these collaborative events. A video platform makes it easy increase audience engagement with large-scale presentations, and provides a higher level of interactivity. Here are 5 features and tools video platforms offer to assist with
the success of your town hall meeting.
Chat/Q & A
The success of your town hall is dependent on the discussion and questions of the audience. An enterprise video platform makes it easy for employees to participate and ask questions in real-time. Through the chat feature they can simply type in a question. Depending on the team assisting with the town hall meeting, the questions may get organized by a moderator, or they may get immediately answered by the presenter.
Polls
Inserting a poll into your town hall meetings is a fantastic way to gauge interest, as well as spark some excitement into the meeting. For example, how would your employees respond if you were to suddenly ask during the meeting how they thought the meeting was going so far? Would the response be potentially favorable? And if not, what might you do to change the direction and course of the meeting? Some CEOs may worry that any potential negativity will destroy the meeting as well as their credibility, but really, having the knowledge and power to change the direction of a meeting is a powerful tool!
Commenting
The opportunity for discussion and collaboration doesn’t end when your town hall meeting is over! Posting your recorded meeting to a central location is one of the best ways for employees to continue the discussion. By enabling commenting, employees can still play an active role in the conversation by asking questions and voicing any concerns.
Sharing
One of the most powerful elements of using a video platform for a town hall meeting is the opportunity to share the meeting with others, or to rewatch it on your own. This is especially useful for employees that may not have been present during the live broadcast. And because a transcript can be made available, employees who may have difficulty hearing, or understanding the language the meeting was presented in, can follow along by comfortably reading the transcript at their own pace.
Surveys
There is one final way of collecting feedback from CEO town hall meetings–through an employee survey. Once the meeting is over the presenter/CEO can send out a survey asking for employee feedback. You could include questions about the length and format of the meeting, or you could ask employees for the feedback on actual topics that may have been discussed throughout the meeting.
If you are still running your CEO town hall meetings the old fashioned way, consider the many ways your employees may be missing out. With the help of a video platform you can take collaboration and interactivity to the next level.