5 ways to ruin employee town halls

Chances are, your employee town halls are terrible.

In fairness, companywide meetings at your company have probably always sucked. The good news is that you’re not alone and that it’s possible to make town halls tolerable and efficient—perhaps even downright enjoyable.

Here are five reasons the vast majority of employee town hall meetings suck (and ideas to make them better):

1. You deny how much your town halls suck.

After even the most dismal town hall, your CEO or CFO or whoever probably says something like, “That went pretty well, didn’t it?” To which you reply, “It looked good to me,” or, “Nice full house,” or maybe even, “Sure were a lot of questions.”

Of course, none of those things determines whether the meeting succeeded.

To your executives, perhaps just getting out of the room alive is good enough. However, if the intention was to inform, engage, involve and listen to employees, then you probably missed the mark.

To make town halls more productive, seek employees’ candid feedback after each event. Ask them:

Employee responses should shape your future town hall meeting format, location and agenda.

2. You include way too much material for one town hall.