Hybrid town hall meetings are supposed to connect leadership and employees across locations. But in reality, they create two different meeting experiences: one for in-person attendees and another for remote participants.
The latter may feel like passive observers rather than active contributors. For instance, employees in Amsterdam might confidently speak up in a room filled with executives, while their counterparts in Manila aren’t even sure when—or if—they can jump into the conversation.
This engagement gap isn’t intentional, nor is it due to a lack of dedicated technology. Think of it as a design flaw. A hybrid town hall meeting naturally favours those in the room, leaving remote workers at a disadvantage.
How do we fix that? Engagement is both an art and a science. This time, we turn to psychology, the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour, to uncover ways to make in-person and remote attendees feel equally involved in your next hybrid town hall.
Inside the mind: What happens during a hybrid town hall meeting?
So, the two groups experience the same event differently. Some intangible factors are at play here that affect how in-person and remote workers think, behave, and learn.
These subtle distinctions shape how each group engages in a hybrid town hall. And here’s your gentle reminder to pay attention to them as much as polishing presentations or sharpening messages.
In-person group
- Being in the same room creates more natural opportunities to get noticed and speak up
- Nonverbal reactions like nods, laughs, and eye contact contribute to a more interactive atmosphere
- Proximity bias makes leadership more responsive to in-person voices (often unconsciously), increasing their influence
- Spontaneous chats during, before, and after the meeting allow for deeper bonds and discussions
Remote group
- Missing social cues like eye contact or body language make it hard to know when to speak
- Limited visibility reduces interaction with leadership, making employees feel less valued
- Dealing with feelings of exclusion takes a lot of mental effort, causing people to gradually disengage
- Lack of clear ways to participate shifts attention to emails, side tasks, kids, pets, or coffee shop noises
8 psychology-backed ways to close the engagement gap in hybrid town halls
Now that we understand what shapes engagement in hybrid town hall meetings, the next step is to be more intentional in how we design them.
Here are science-backed strategies to help you close the gap, ensuring both in-person and remote employees feel equally valued and included.
1. Acknowledge remote employees first to make them feel seen
Prioritise the presence of virtual attendees from the beginning. Something as simple as greeting them first can release oxytocin in their brains, which boosts their sociability.
Even so, this effectively speaks to the inherent challenge you face from a visibility and communication standpoint. It’s also the easiest to plan and execute.
🛠 Put it into practice:
- Set the tone with a pre-meeting word cloud or chat prompt, e.g. ‘Describe your week in one word!’
- Open with a shoutout to remote participants, e.g. ‘We have employees joining us from Colombo, Marrakesh, and Singapore—let’s say hi to each other!’
- Frequently reference virtual attendees throughout the meeting to reinforce their presence
2. Make digital participation the default to include everyone
It’s crucial to create a level playing field every chance you get. You can start by asking everyone to participate using the same digital platform.
This eliminates proximity bias, ensuring leadership doesn’t just respond to the loudest voices in the room. At the same time, remote employees feel safer speaking up, knowing their questions won’t get ignored.
📌 Try this approach:
- Mute in-room mics and direct all questions or poll responses through a digital channel accessible on their devices
- Include non-verbal interactions like upvoting/downvoting questions and reacting with emojis
- Display top-voted questions on-screen so leadership can address the most pressing concerns
3. Employ pattern interrupts to re-engage both groups
Lisa Schulteis, an event experience expert with a background in neuropsychology, explains that people lose focus after 10–15 minutes. To keep in-person and remote employees engaged throughout your hybrid town hall meeting, she suggests using ‘pattern interrupts’.
These refer to micro-moments that interrupt the brain’s usual behaviour, i.e. falling into a state of passive listening. They bring back attendees to the present, which could be the point where leaders are delivering key messages.
⚡ Turn this insight into action:
- Poll employees mid-meeting without leaving your presentation slide
- Let attendees use emoji reactions to show agreement or appreciation, or signal that they’re following along
- Switch up the format, e.g. transition from a speaker-led segment to a short video or go straight to question-and-answer (Q&A)
4. Adopt visualisation and storytelling techniques to make messages stick
Tell stories. Weave in some visuals. Both are powerful tools to capture attention, immerse attendees, and improve information retention.
Using them to reframe dry updates helps reduce mental fatigue. This way, your employees can easily process your hybrid town hall content and even fully engage with it!
✨ Make it happen:
- Tap into people’s emotional memory with narratives, turning updates into stories with a challenge, journey, and outcome
- Share real-life examples to make concepts or messages relatable
- Visualise key messages using infographics, videos, whiteboards, or live sketches
*Source: Owl Labs
5. Design the experience to minimise distractions for remote attendees
Create a seamless experience so remote employees can fully follow the discussion without feeling disconnected. This requires a mix of technology and thoughtful design.
✅ Here’s how to do it right:
- Use speaker close-ups and video tracking so virtual attendees and those in the back see facial expressions and body language
- Enable real-time translation via artificial intelligence (AI), allowing employees to keep up with the discussion in their preferred language
- Optimise audio with noise-cancelling mics and balanced sound settings, ensuring remote employees hear every word
6. Tap into gamification to sustain engagement
Boring hybrid town halls don’t work.. Inject fun, play, uncertainty, and challenge to make the hybrid town hall experience more rewarding.
The brain releases dopamine when something feels enjoyable. A well-designed game builds on this by activating autonomy, competence, and relatedness—the essential elements of sustained engagement.
🏆 Let the games begin:
- Announce that you’ll be rewarding the most insightful question during live Q&A (works for sessions where the anonymity toggle is off)
- Ask in-person and remote workers to rank ideas via a poll, involving them in prioritisation or decision-making
- Reinforce key updates with quick, interactive quizzes that keep everyone paying attention
7. Leverage interactive features to ‘read the room’ in real time
Reading the room takes on a new meaning as you deal with physical and virtual ones. By enforcing a common digital platform for everyone (as mentioned above), you level the playing field for both attendees.
Ensure the platform has interactive features that will help you account for how virtual audiences feel. This way, you can create a safe space for expressing sentiments, including joy, wonder, or disappointments for both in-person and remote employees.
📊 Do a pulse check:
- Use Live Q&A and Polls to gather input that’s more representative of your employees, enhancing post-town hall analysis
- Let employees express how they feel with Reactions, a set of emojis they can tap on their laptops, tablets, or smartphones just like how they would applaud a livestreamer
- Analyse the data after the hybrid town hall to uncover issues or concerns and address them accordingly—showing employees that their input matters
8. End with a shared ritual to reinforce connection
Create a shared ritual that brings both in-person and remote employees together. This ritual gives them a familiar, meaningful experience they can associate with the company’s culture.
Closing this way also provides structure to the attendees, enabling them to leave with a clear purpose or takeaway.
🚀 Your next steps:
- Play an energising song to end on a high note (pun intended)—you can also play upbeat music at the beginning and a light instrumental track during transitions
- Have a signature sign-off tradition, e.g. taking a final group photo, saying goodbye to different teams or locations, or asking attendees to leave one takeaway via chat or word cloud
- Keep the momentum going by leaving the Q&A open and ensure leadership follow up on important yet unanswered questions
Your homework
Designing your hybrid town hall to be a more equally satisfying experience doesn’t mean overhauling everything at once. You can start small: pick one strategy and test it in your next session.
This is where the art of engagement comes in. As you discover what works, you can refine and scale up your approach. Over time, you’ll build a culture of participation in your hybrid town halls where every employee—whether remote or in the room—feels valued and included.
So, which one will you try first?
