Tips and Training >> Definitions >> Town Hall Business Meeting

What is a Town Hall Business Meeting?

A Town Hall Business Meeting is an organization-wide business meeting in which an executive report is made and then employees or guests have an opportunity to ask questions and engage with business executives.

Town Hall Business Meetings can be virtual or held in-person, in large conference rooms, corporate cafeterias, hotel ballrooms and even across many time zones and continents. Virtual Town Hall Business Meetings can be held with all parties (both presenters and participants) at their homes. This can be done with good planning and technical execution.

Effective Town Hall Business Meetings usually begin with a "State of Affairs" presentation and include considerable time for questions and answers. The term "All-Hands" meeting is often used interchangeably with Town Hall Meeting, however a Town Hall meeting is more question and answer based while All-Hands meetings are generally more focused on conveying a message and making a key presentation without Questions and Answers.

Multi location Town Hall Business Meetings [Virtual or Physical]

Organizations typically want to create a strong sense of community and therefore energy with a Town Hall Meeting. Ideally, large organizations can gather employees or team members in regional offices and link them together in a Multi-Location Town Hall. Alternatively, using similar online tools, Virtual Town Hall Meetings are now possible in which every single presenter and attendee is in their own location. The Pandemic of 2020 has caused a surge in the need to Socially Distance people from one another and so Virtual Town Hall Meetings address this challenge.

Using video communications systems and a backbone of a cloud-based collaboration services such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom Communications’ “Zoom Webinars” along with a meeting moderator, organizations can hold Town Hall Business Meetings in multiple time zones at once, virtually. A typical format is for the executives to make a presentation (which often includes a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation) and then the meeting transitions to a lengthy question and answer period.

Questions and answers are moderated so each of the meeting’s participants can ask questions and even interact with executives about their answers. The moderator moves from location to location or question to question, announcing each as the question and answer session proceeds. Closing remarks and a summary statement are again made by the host location executives and a recording of the session is often made available for later viewing.

What does a Multi location Town Hall Business Meeting cost?

Virtual Town Hall Meetings can be very economical and wide reaching. A professionally managed 90 Minute Global Town Hall Meeting with 1,000 – 5,000 attendees can be arranged for as little as $1 per attendee with limited special services such as help desk support or technical moderation. Professional highly moderated, Virtual Town Hall Meetings that include viewer registration, presentation management, surveys, live videos, multiple presenting locations and presenters can also serve 1,000 to 5,000 viewers or more for $10,000 to $20,000. A key attribute of using the Internet to provide audience members their access to a Town Hall Meeting is the nearly unlimited size of the potential audience. An audience of 5,000, 10,000 or more can economically be served using collaboration tools and webcasts, both of which can create high quality Virtual Town Hall Meeting Experiences.

For Multi Location physical meetings where audience members gather together in regional offices or hotel facilities, costs vary considerably based on the locations themselves, however, some good budgetary rules generally apply.

If the locations are at hotel facilities such as ballrooms or conference facilities the cost to communicate between them adds about $5,000 per location, bringing a budgetary cost to about $25,000 per host site and $15,000 for each remote site.

In general, the host location requires special attention, extra microphones, technical support, cameras and operators as well as a professional grade audio system. We recommend a budget of $35,000 USD for a two to three hour meeting for the host site. Remote locations are about half the cost of the host site and so budgeting $15,000 - $20,000 USD for each additional site is a good practice.

If the locations are at hotel facilities such as ballrooms or conference facilities the cost to communicate between them adds about $5,000 per location, bringing a budgetary cost to about $40,000 per host site and $25,000 for each remote site.

Food and beverage services add to the costs, as do many other hotel or conference facility services.

Advantages of a Town Hall Business Meeting

All employees get one message in a lively forum that comes close to the experience of having executives travel to each location. The key advantage of a Town Hall Business Meeting is a well orchestrated question and answer session. Using a "Round Robin" moderated format ensures that each location's attendees get the full attention of all executives with ample time to ask questions and to add follow-up questions.

When employees have the opportunity to ask questions and to see and hear a live presentation, a Town Hall Business meeting comes alive in a way a telephone conference or recording cannot.

Disdvantages of a Town Hall Business Meeting

The key disadvantages of a Town Hall Business Meeting are related to how engaging it is for meeting attendees. Low engagement leads to dissatisfaction with the meeting overall. A meeting with high engagement will be successful, while a meeting with a low level of excitement or involvement of participants will be less so. In order to avoid the disadvantage of a Town Hall Meeting being seen as a failure, you must include planning for attendee involvement as this is critical. Audience surveys, in-meeting polling and short, dynamic presentations must all be planned into the meeting. For your Town Hall Meeting, short is better, long is worse and engagement is better while monologues are worse. No one wants to waist their time in a lengthy uninspiring organization-wide meeting, especially if it’s virtual. So, avoid the disadvantage of Town Hall Business Meetings by planning for engaging content, and short impactful presentations.

About TKO VideoConferencing

TKO VideoConferencing, a division of TKO Video Communications, is an industry leader providing high-quality, global video communication solutions for business and government. Services include video conference All-Hands and Town Hall meetings, video conference event management, webinars, webcasting, and both live and on-demand internet streaming. Founded in 1995, TKO is based in Silicon Valley, with offices in New York City, Washington, DC and San Diego.

Contact TKO today for expert technical assistance for your next Town Hall Business Meeting.

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