In a company-wide meeting, businesses can increase company alignment, foster loyalty, enhance employee retention, and build a stronger team. Unsurprisingly, these all-hands meetings have been correlated with achieving faster company growth. Depending on the format you choose, the types of elements you incorporate can vary.
Read on to learn what your company-wide meeting can look like and how to set your business up for success.
What a Company-Wide Meeting Looks Like
Depending on your company, you can choose from several different meeting styles. No matter what style you choose, your meeting can incorporate the following objectives.
- Improve alignment around your company’s strategy and mission.
- Celebrate important milestones and top performers.
- Give updates to employees.
- Let every worker have a chance to ask questions.
Town Halls
A town hall is the standard format for a company-wide meeting. It will include your company’s top leadership and all of your employees. Unlike a company-wide meeting, a town hall tends to have a Q&A format or a discussion component. In general, town halls tend to occur less often than all-hands meetings.
Weekly or Monthly All-Hands Meetings
At a weekly all-hands meeting, the company’s leadership will generally make a presentation. These meetings are less discussion-based than town halls, although there can be a chance for questions at the end. In general, an all-hands meeting is held more frequently and is more structured than town halls. They’re great for giving your workers updates and making announcements.
Virtual Meetings
If you have a remote workplace, you may want to host a virtual meeting. Even if you normally do in-person town halls or all-hands meetings, you may want to have a virtual option so that your remote workers can take part.
Elements to Use for Planning Your Company-Wide Meeting
No matter what type of company-wide meeting you decide to do, there are a few different elements you may want to incorporate into your meeting.
Make an Agenda
An agenda is essential because it gives structure to your meeting and helps keep you on track. Additionally, it’s a good idea to share the agenda in advance so that participants can prepare questions ahead of time.
Provide Updates
Company-wide meetings often include updates about an organization’s progress on major goals. Often, leaders will update team members about previous meeting topics as well.
Get Feedback
Town halls are especially popular ways to get feedback from team members. However, you can include feedback opportunities at the end of your all-hands meetings as well. At a large company, you can ask for feedback to be submitted digitally or through a physical comment form after the meeting. If you send the agenda out ahead of time, make sure to ask for any feedback or ideas at the end of your email.
Address Concerns
A company-wide meeting is an excellent place to address major concerns or problems. This is your opportunity to get team members on board with the solution and get their feedback about any concerns.
Inform About Important Goals and Changes
Whether you’re buying a second headquarters or releasing a new product line, you should update your employees about the goal’s status in a company-wide meeting. These meetings help improve your company alignment, so share information about your vision, objectives, and major updates.
Announce Star Employees
Company-wide meetings are a good opportunity for employee recognition. Something as simple as giving a paper certificate to your employee of the month can improve employee satisfaction and retention.
Send Out the Agenda Early
Ideally, you should always send out the agenda in advance of the meeting. You want your employees to be fully prepared, so you shouldn’t spring the agenda topics on them at the last minute.
Use Technology
Technology is a major element in many company-wide meetings. You may want to incorporate PowerPoint slides, videos, or audio. No matter what kind of technology you use, you should always test it out before the meeting with the computer setup you’ll be using during your presentation.
Consider a Q&A Format
Town halls normally use a Q&A format, but you can still incorporate this element into other types of meetings. A Q&A format is a useful way to encourage new ideas, clarify concerns, and get feedback,
Set Up Remote Connectivity
If you have remote workers, it’s a good idea to offer remote options to your company-wide meetings. Talk to your tech team ahead of time to ensure your remote access will be ready for the big day.
Why You Need to Host Employee Meetings
Company-wide meetings are a great way to lower the barriers between departments and reinforce your company culture. If you’re not already hosting a company-wide meeting, you could be missing out on an inexpensive tool that can foster loyalty, boost retention, and provide employee recognition opportunities.
Foster Loyalty and Teamwork
When you share information and give people a venue for speaking up, it encourages buy-in and helps them feel like they are a part of your company. With company meetings, you can promote loyalty and teamwork among your workforce. All of your workers can feel like their ideas and input are valued.
Reinforce Company Culture
Meetings are an excellent way to demonstrate your culture in action. You can talk about your mission and your company’s progress toward major goals.
Boost Employee Retention
When people feel like they are a part of the team and share in a company’s mission, they’re more likely to stay at your company. Company-wide meetings are a way to make your workers feel valued and heard, which can reduce your turnover rate.
Uplift Morale
If your company landed a new client or finally completed an important project, use the company-wide meeting to celebrate the fact. When you celebrate wins, it can boost morale. In turn, this can help improve retention rates and enhance a positive company culture.
Improve Employee Compliance
Company-wide meetings are an incredibly important way to increase employee compliance with your policies. In a Mission to Grow podcast on “Employee Retention,” Mary Simmons, Asure’s vice president of HR compliance, learning, and development, talked about this benefit. “The employees want to know the why. Usually, when you do a company-wide meeting, you’re talking about the why.”
For example, your company may require employees to greet every customer that comes in. Some employees may not be doing this because they don’t understand why it’s important. According to Simmons, you can improve compliance by addressing this goal at your town hall. “When you consistently say that in a town hall, you’re going to get more engagement and better customer service.”
Celebrate and Recognize Top Performers
Many small businesses don’t have an employee recognition program because they think it costs too much. In reality, your employee recognition could be a bulletin board that has your star performer for the month displayed on it. During your company-wide meetings, you can recognize top performers and employees of the month so that they get public recognition for their hard work.
Do You Conduct Company-Wide Meetings to Communicate Changes and Company Incentives?
In the 2024 HR Benchmark Report, we found that company-wide meetings were correlated to becoming a fast-growth company.
74% of zero-growth firms have company-wide meetings.
90% of fast-growth firms have company-wide meetings.
While all companies seem to be having company-wide meetings at a fairly high rate, fast-growth companies are still 16 percentage points more likely to be having company-wide meetings.
If you break down the numbers to just companies that have less than 25 employees, you’ll see that company-wide meetings are even more closely linked to faster business growth.
67% of zero-growth companies use company-wide meetings.
85% of fast-growth companies use company-wide meetings.
Improve Your Growth and Retention Through Company-Wide Meetings
Whenever you convey information about your company, you want to be consistent. Because a company-wide meeting involves everyone, it ensures that each employee can access the same information. Thanks to company-wide meetings, you can enjoy better business growth, lower turnover, and a stronger company culture.
If you’re ready to boost your retention rates, we can help. Reach out to Asure’s small business HR experts today to learn more about company-wide meetings and other HR best practices.