7 Reasons To Host Virtual Town Hall Meetings

Get Your Message Heard With A Virtual Town Hall!

Town hall meetings are excellent for uniting organizations to share essential business updates, customer wins, company-wide goal progress, and critical strategy choices. 

With more employees choosing to work remotely, it can feel impossible to get all your staff together in the same place for an in-person town hall. 

With all the advances in video conferencing technology, it’s relatively easy to host a virtual town hall meeting. Employees will reap many of the same benefits, such as face-to-face interaction, with the perk of attending from anywhere. 

Virtual town hall meetings give you the chance to easily share content through screen sharing, add interactive features to engage your audience in new ways, and record the meeting for easy follow-up and recap.  

But what is a virtual town hall meeting, and why should you incorporate them into your company’s meeting schedule? Let’s take a look and see how a successful virtual town hall meeting can benefit your business. 

What Is a Virtual Town Hall Meeting? 

Virtual town hall meetings are virtual events that provide employees with a way to hear from company leadership to better understand how they contribute to their success. 

These interactive virtual events generate a sense of community among your employees due to the nature of the “all-hands discussion tactic. The meetings create a sense of community, provide important content, and give context to company goals and priorities.

And most importantly, they allow an organization’s employees to be heard by those who may not be “in the trenches” with them daily. 

Despite all the good things people take away from a productive town hall meeting, it’s easy to see why they’re costly, challenging to manage, and at times, very stressful.

In this digital age of information, having the capabilities to host and broadcast virtual company town hall meetings is invaluable.

Let’s dive right into the primary benefits of holding engaging virtual town hall meetings – and we’ll also provide best practices for effectively executing them along the way.

7 Reasons To Host An Engaging Virtual Town Hall Meeting 

Yet despite all the good things people take away from a great town hall meeting, it’s easy to see why they’re costly, difficult to manage, and at times, very stressful.

In this digital age of information, having the capabilities to host and broadcast virtual company town hall meetings is invaluable.

Let’s dive right into the primary benefits of holding virtual town hall meetings – and we’ll also provide best practices for effectively executing them along the way.

1. Geography Is No Longer an Obstacle

It is increasingly common for businesses to support a virtual workplace. Between the steady rise in remote employees requiring video meetings and the sheer number of organizations with satellite offices operating across the globe, being able to communicate and engage with your employees via virtual town hall meetings is more critical than ever.

No matter where your employees are working, the ability to broadcast company events on a one-to-many scale will take your internal communications program to the next level.

Tip: 

Partner with a virtual event facilitator that can easily handle large-scale virtual and hybrid events. There are so many webinars and webcasting tools on the market today. Still, very few of them can accommodate upwards of a couple of hundred participants without glitches or crashes during a live stream. 

If that’s the case, these vendors certainly can’t scale with your organization as your events become more prominent over time or if you have an unexpectedly high attendance rate at a town hall meeting.

2. Significant Cost Savings

Think about the expenses associated with hosting a large-scale corporate town hall meeting: venue, security, F&B, parking, and airfare all ad dup quickly.

Even if you are a facilitator for face-to-face events and have an annual budget, managers may allocate some of that budget to other communications or business projects.

Not only does conducting a virtual version of your CEO town hall allow you to take advantage of digital features and engagement analytics, but it’s also going to save your employees a ton of time and save your business a ton of money.

Tip: 

Efficiency is key! If all parties involved can participate remotely on their preferred device, it’s much more possible to hold regular town hall meetings with little to no disruption. 

These virtual meeting tips provide a few more ways to keep discussions productive and attendees interested. 

3. Better Employee Engagement

In a fast-paced business, it’s not easy to keep every employee engaged and motivated. Dale Carnegie and MSW conducted a recent study of over 1,500 employees that found 71% of respondents were not fully engaged – and 26% were considered disengaged. 

The primary reasons cited involved a lack of belief in senior management, a poor relationship with the direct manager, and a lack of pride in working for the company. 

By creating better communication channels with more interaction between the C-Suite and company employees, your organization is much less likely to encounter these problems.

Tip: 

Give your employees a voice through live polling, live chat, a Q&A session, and breakout sessions throughout the presentation. 

This can be conducted by a full-service provider’s moderator or by someone internally. The point is to talk with team members during the town hall instead of lecturing.

4. Thought Leadership

Riding the technology wave and demonstrating thought leadership goes hand in hand. In addition to the numerous other benefits, mastering the art of executing virtual town hall meetings will modernize your business communications. 

It’s also no secret that everyone appreciates convenience and time savings – and as workplace professionals, we look to management to facilitate these processes. 

That’s not to say we recommend abolishing in-person meetings all together – but crafting a unique and engaging virtual experience for your employees can make a big difference in the way your organization is perceived.

Tip: 

It’s essential to invest in a reliable platform that will not lead you into a nightmare of technical difficulties. 

Moreover, search for a one-to-many tool that’s fully customizable and allows for additional customization via API Keys. 

5. OnDemand Functionality

If you’re webcasting a live company event, conference, or live town hall meeting, that’s great! This tip may still apply. But recording a webinar version of your town hall is quick and painless – and the demand for, well, OnDemand has climbed to the point where it’s expected. 

Building a resource portal or media library for your website (or a password-protected version just for employees) is an excellent way to keep those unable to make the event in the loop.

Tip: 

Not only can OnDemand recordings prevent absent employees from missing out on town hall meeting points and announcements, but they also provide excellent material for repurposing content on other channels. 

Pull excerpts, quotes, and polling stats for website modules, social media posts, blog articles, etc. Even video clips snipped from the town hall meeting can be recycled into powerful promotional pieces.

6. Opportunity to Showcase (and Enhance) Company Culture

Like all town hall meetings, virtual town hall meetings are a chance for upper management to build a sense of community, trust, and fun with their employees.

Lead by example. To improve the efficacy of your internal communications, encourage company executives to take an active role in the process. 

Tip: 

Don’t be so scripted. Your town hall isn’t meant to be a press release personified. Personality is key here, so have fun with your new town hall-style! 

Get creative with visuals – and to encourage employee questions, it’s a good idea to have a few planned or prepared in advance to get the ball rolling. Plus, this gives whoever is presenting a chance to warm up!

7. Access to Analytics

Like any other virtual event – whether it be a webinar, online seminar, podcast, etc. – it’s crucial that you can measure its success, particularly in terms of audience engagement. 

Yes, you can couple these efforts with changes in employee productivity and retention rates, but ensuring your virtual town hall meetings effectively requires access to real-time and post-event data. With the right software, you can even track participation and verify attendance using a variety of tools.

Tip:

Make use of post-event evaluations (this is an element that ideally should be built right into your virtual event platform). Whatever questions you ask is up to you, but be sure to announce that your attendees will be redirected to a survey after the town hall has ended. 

Host A Successful Virtual Town Hall Meeting Today 

Offering an additional small incentive for filling it out may also foster a more inviting atmosphere. Your town hall meetings don’t have to be an enormous expense, nor do they have to be dull and monotonous experiences for executives or their employees. 

If your current in-person town hall-style feels like a chore, try conducting them virtually for a change! Add interactive features, engaging icebreakers, and use a townhall meeting solution service to ensure it goes off without a hitch. 

Have questions about how BeaconLive helps customers produce effective virtual town hall meetings? Contact our team today – or simply request a guided tour of our virtual event platform! We’re happy to help.