Today I'm answering a question from a Senior Internal Communications Manager in London. She says:
First off, I love reading your emails and your internal comms toolkit has been super helpful. I have a question about Townhalls. Do you have any ideas to make Townhalls more exciting and engaging for employees. We cover the basics, big strategic programs of work, progress on our strategic priorities etc., but I feel like I am missing something to make this an employee engagement event. I would appreciate any advice.
Okay I LOVE this question because I've seen some really terrible townhalls in my day, so if you're struggling to make your townhalls engaging and memorable for employees then you're not alone. It's hard when you're often a team-of-one in internal communications and you don't have access to an events manager or a tech team. But there are absolutely things you can do to elevate your townhall and make it better.
This topic came up recently in my membership community, The Curious Tribe, where we had an external guest speaker (the excellent Raquel Coole from Cisco) come in to share her tips and tricks for great townhalls. This was some of the best, practical and actionable advice I've seen on townhalls and the community members loved it, judging by the messages I got afterwards. As ever, all events and recordings are available to members of my tribe so if you're interested you can get your membership here.
But of course I'll give you a few pieces of my own advice here for free on how to make your townhall more engaging.
Think consumer grade for townhalls
One mistake I often see organisations make is this: external events for customers are planned months in advance, are carefully designed for outcomes, are designed with the audience in mind and are planned within an inch of their lives.
Does this sound like how most organisations approach their townhalls?
Not in my experience, no.
Most townhalls are designed around what the leaders want to talk about (rather than what the audience needs to know or what they care about), are suffering from powerpoint overload, the slides are stuffed with acronyms and graphs and each speaker is given WAY TOO LONG to talk. I've seen townhalls that are literally 2 hours of PowerPoint and corporate speak - this would seriously NEVER happen in a customer event. It simply wouldn't be allowed!
So my first piece of advice is this: think consumer grade. What steps could you take to elevate your townhall to the standard that you would use for a customer event?
This could take many forms: For example, maybe you need to gather more audience insight so that you really understand what your audience need from this event. Do they want more transparency from leaders? Do they want more updates on the big picture? Do they want the opportunity to ask more questions?
Or maybe you could think about timing. Could you make segments tighter and shorter? Do you need to help your speakers to identify their key message and get to the point more quickly? 100% those speakers would be drilled for a customer event so there should be no double standard here in my opinion.
Have a clear purpose for your townhalls
My second piece of advice is to have a really clear, documented and agreed-upon purpose for your townhall events. There has to be a bloody good reason for your employees to down tools and attendees these events - a townhall has to give them something they can't get through any other channel.
This might be something like:
Build trust in your CEO and executive team through increased visibility and real-time communication
Make employees feel heard by having leadership address their top concerns in a live, on-the-spot environment
Celebrate company and employee achievements with fanfare and music
You might have one purpose, you might have a couple, but it should be clear why you're holding this event and why employees should care. You want to make sure that employees don't just attend - but that they WANT to attend and they find the content relevant and useful.
This will ensure they keep coming back and will help you make the event popular and useful.
Get creative for your internal communications
I'm going to say this loud and clear:
Townhalls don't have to be boring.
TOWNHALLS DON'T HAVE TO BE BORING!
For example, you don't need PowerPoint in a townhall. (I can hear the gasps of horror from executives from here). A member of my Curious Tribe community recently ran an onsite townhall as a chat show, where the CEO invited guests up for conversations and chats. There was zero presentations, zero PowerPoint and zero boredom.
So when you want to get creative and make your townhalls un-boring (is that a word?) then here's my unorthodox piece of advice:
Watch some TV shows.
Big producers of famous TV shows have spent MILLIONS figuring out what formats are engaging, how to keep viewers hooked, how to make your guests look great, how to change up the formats. This is 100% where you can do your research to get ideas.
For example:
You're doing a session on the company strategy. Why not try the format of "2 truths and a lie" to gamify the learning? Get your CEO to give 2 truths and 1 lie about progress against the strategy and get your audience to vote on it. Then your CEO can talk about it, explain it and I guarantee it'll be more memorable than a PowerPoint deck.
Maybe you want to introduce a new member of the leadership team. Why not use the format from Hot Ones to get them to talk about themselves? If you don't know this show, the host invites a guest on and they eat increasingly spicy chicken wings while having a conversation until their eyes begin to water and they give in. It's wildly entertaining.
If your leadership team is a more more conservative and unlikely to eat chicken wings live in front of a camera (understandable), then perhaps start smaller and use a chat show format. Watch some shows from people like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon or Stephen Colbert to see what kind of formats they use, how they change up segments, how they use music to create an atmosphere.
Plus my favourite part of this advice is that you have a legitimate reason to watch TV and eat snacks as part of your job. Living the dream!
I hope this gives you some inspiration for making your townhall meetings more engaging and exciting. You may not have the big budgets they have for American talk shows, but you'd be surprised how much you can achieve with a little imagination and enthusiasm.
Before you go...
If you've ever wondered what salary ranges exist in internal communication (or if you've ever wondered if you're paid fairly) then have a look at this brand new video where I outline salary benchmarks for junior, mid-level and senior roles in internal comms.
Thanks for reading and stay curious,
Joanna
Check out my new book, "Innovative Internal Communication" here.
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