Strategies for measuring the sentiment and success of your town halls

During Ragan’s “How to Execute Outstanding Town Halls” webinar last month, Southwire Manager of Communications Jordan Weathers shared how he measures sentiment and success before, during and after the big event.

Here’s what we learned.

Weathers began by explaining why Southwire, a manufacturer of wire and cable that he called “the largest company you never heard of,” needed to rethink its town halls in the first place. When Rich Stinson joined as President and CEO in 2015, Southwire started hosting quarterly town halls at its facilities.

Those town halls allowed a large group of team members to hear from Stinson, but it was mostly one-way. Southwire offered a livestream and recorded video, but that took a ton of gear, people and time to execute. These town halls also required a host facility to clear space and stop production during the live event.

The key metrics for these were:

Suffice to say, the pandemic gave Southwire an opportunity to rethink its approach for addressing its workforce during town halls. This brought the organization to an intermediate period wherein Stinson provided weekly, largely COVID-focused business updates aimed to unite the workforce around its “Unite ONE Southwire” vision.