Events
A town hall meeting is a gathering where leadership updates the whole organisation at once on direction, results and change, and where employees are free to ask questions. Nothing gets decided: the point is that everyone hears the same story, from the people responsible for it. Many organisations hold one every quarter, and more and more often as a hybrid event: in a room and online at the same time.
That sounds simple. In practice you often see the opposite: four speakers with a deck each, an hour of slides full of numbers, and a Q&A that gets cut at the end because time has run out.
In this article: what a town hall is, when to hold one, an agenda that works, how to get real questions, and how to make a presentation that lands in the room and on a laptop at home. With two examples from our own work.
What is a town hall meeting?
The name comes from the United States. In the villages of New England, residents met in the town hall as early as the seventeenth century to talk with the people who governed them. Companies adopted the term for a meeting with the same idea: leadership shows up in person, and anyone can ask a question.
A town hall is not a regular meeting. There is no decision, no vote and usually no breakout discussion. It isn't a newsletter either: its strength is that you hear and see leadership, and that you can ask back.
You may know it by another name: all-hands, quarterly meeting, staff meeting or company update. On spelling: town hall as two words is the standard, but townhall as one word is common too. Pick one and stick with it in your invitations.
When should you hold a town hall?
There are two kinds of reasons.
A fixed rhythm. Every quarter or every six months, often shortly after the numbers come in. The advantage: people know they will hear how things are going at set moments, even when nothing special is happening. HeadFirst Group has its own format for this, Up Next, where colleagues hear every quarter about upcoming releases and technology.
A big change. A new strategy, an acquisition, a new CEO, an office move or a restructuring. You want everyone to hear the same story at the same moment, before the corridor talk takes over.
One thing doesn't belong in it: news about individual people. Anyone losing their job or changing roles hears it personally beforehand, not in a room with three hundred colleagues.
An agenda that works
A one-hour town hall can look like this:
Opening (5 minutes). Why we are here and what you will know afterwards.
Where we stand (10 minutes). The results, short and honest, including what disappointed.
The big topic (15 minutes). One theme that matters right now: the new strategy, the acquisition, the plan for next year.
A voice from the organisation (10 minutes). A team or colleague showing what it means in practice.
Questions (15 minutes). Fixed time, not whatever is left over.
Close (5 minutes). What happens next, and where to go with questions.
Two choices make the difference. One big topic instead of five small ones: whatever doesn't fit goes in an email or on the intranet. And a Q&A with a fixed place in the programme. Overruns almost always happen, and if the questions come last, they get cut. Put them halfway through if you need to.
How to organise a town hall in seven steps
Start with one message. What should everyone know, feel or do afterwards? Write it down in one sentence. Every speaker and every slide contributes to it.
Keep the speakers few. Two to four is enough. The CEO opens, but also give the floor to people closer to the work.
Collect questions in advance. An anonymous form a week ahead shows what is on people's minds. Address the most common questions in the story itself.
Plan the tech for the room and the screen. Microsoft Teams has a separate meeting type for town halls, with a moderated Q&A. How many attendees you can host depends on your licence. Agree who monitors the online questions and who runs the show.
Make one presentation, not four. One storyline, one template and one visual style for all speakers. Otherwise it feels like four separate meetings back to back.
Rehearse with the real tech. A run-through in the room, with microphones, clicker and stream. That is when you find out a speaker runs long or a video has no sound, not during the livestream.
Follow up within a week. Send the recording, a short summary and answers to the questions that were left open. It shows that asking questions is worth it.
The presentation: design for the smallest screen
A town hall presentation is watched on two screens at once: large in the room and small on the laptop of whoever is watching from home. Design for the smallest. That means:
One message per slide. A headline that reads as a sentence, so it makes sense even if you weren't listening for a moment.
Big numbers, few numbers. One figure per slide with a comparison, such as last year or the target, says more than a table nobody can read.
People on screen. Photos or short videos of colleagues, clients and projects. A town hall is about the organisation, so show it.
Breathing room between speakers. A fixed opening slide or short video per speaker gives structure and time to switch.
A strong concept holds it all together. For Schiphol we created a half-day strategy event for 200 managers, around the theme 24/7: how every department works together to keep the airport running day and night. The programme played out a full day, from sunrise to the next morning, on a screen 35 metres wide. To make leadership approachable, we built a late night talk show instead of yet another talk behind a lectern. Read the Schiphol case.
At HeadFirst Group the challenge was the hybrid format. The Up Next events ran live in Amsterdam, in front of a 30-metre screen, and online at the same time. We created one event identity for presentations, videos and bumpers, and coached the speakers to address both the room and the camera. Read the HeadFirst Group case.
How to get real questions
The moment that makes a town hall valuable is also the moment it most often goes quiet. Nobody wants to be the first to raise a hand in front of three hundred colleagues. What helps:
Let people ask anonymously through the Teams Q&A or a tool such as Slido or Mentimeter, and let colleagues vote on questions.
Have a moderator who groups questions and picks the critical ones too. If only the easy questions come up, the room notices.
Start with a tough question yourself, for example one that came in beforehand. It shows that it's allowed.
Say so when you don't know, and when the answer will come. Then make sure you follow through.
More on keeping an online audience engaged in five tips to keep your online audience engaged.
Five mistakes we often see
Too many speakers and too many topics. The programme overruns and nobody remembers anything.
Every speaker with their own deck. Different fonts, different colours, different style. It looks like separate pieces instead of one story.
Questions as an afterthought. Five minutes at the end, when everyone is already eyeing the coffee.
Only good news. Employees usually know what is going wrong as well. Skip it and you lose credibility.
No follow-up. Unanswered questions and a recording nobody receives make the next town hall quieter.
A town hall is one of the few moments when the entire organisation is looking at the same thing at the same time. That is worth preparing well.
Mr.Prezident supports internal events, from storyline and agenda to presentations, videos and the tech on the day itself. Read more about outsourcing your event presentation.
Frequently asked questions
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What is a town hall meeting?
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Is it town hall or townhall?
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What is another name for a town hall meeting?
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What happens during a town hall meeting?
