An all-hands meeting is not these things: a lecture, a monologue, just another meeting. It’s a vital platform for the company’s leadership team to engage directly with employees—and vice-versa.
That’s why it’s crucial to get it right. You must blend informative content with interactive elements and ensure every voice is heard. It’s a tricky balancing act, but mastering it can significantly enhance employee engagement and collaboration.
This guide will help you navigate this challenge by providing a solid understanding of the fundamentals. You’ll learn what an all-hands meeting is and why you should host it regularly. From there, you’ll find actionable tips and easy-to-use tools so you can start running effective all-hands meetings immediately.
What is an all-hands meeting?
An all-hands meeting is a way for the entire company to come together to ensure that leaders and employees are on the same page.
While traditionally used by leadership to share key updates, an effective all-hands should be a two-way conversation about topics affecting all attendees. This offers your staff a chance to ask questions, share feedback, and stay connected—especially in large or distributed organisations.
Depending on your needs, you can host it monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or as needed.
Why is an all-hands meeting important?
Sometimes called a town hall, an all-hands meeting is important because it allows top management to share key messages with employees personally. It’s also where the latter can receive answers to their questions instantly.
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💡 What is the difference between an all-hands meeting and a town hall meeting? While these terms are often interchangeable, you can differentiate an all-hands meeting by its clear agenda. As the name suggests, a town hall meeting is more of an open dialogue—it has a set of topics to cover, but it can flow in a few different ways based on individual issues and concerns. Both are platforms for direct communication between leadership and employees. An all-hands meeting includes an interactive Q&A and is aimed at aligning everyone around company goals and updates. A town hall meeting is specifically designed to gather input, hear concerns, and accommodate a wide range of questions and feedback. |
Specifically, an all-staff meeting serves as a platform to:
- Introduce new company-wide projects and initiatives
- Provide updates on performance metrics
- Ensure all teams align on the same goals
- Celebrate milestones and recognise contributors
- Address pressing employee concerns
What do all-hands meetings accomplish?
🤩 B for benefits. No matter what you want to communicate, you can achieve the ‘three Bs’ of hosting an all-hands if you do it right. You can build trust, bond, and promote belonging at every session.
Build trust
Direct communication between bosses and employees presents valuable opportunities to build a culture of transparency and trust.
But this only works if leaders are open to sharing important information, such as sales figures, employee satisfaction survey results, and financial data. They must also show candour when addressing complex topics.
How to achieve this: Too often, employees feel distanced from their leaders because their concerns go unheard or ignored. An authentic and intimate all-hands is a strategic way to close the gap.
Be sincere when asking for feedback and welcome diverse perspectives. You can provide an anonymous Q&A platform that encourages more people to speak up. And finally, make efforts to resolve issues and improve areas of concern.
Bond with your team
All-hands meetings shouldn’t be all work and no play. Use them to add some company-level fun, celebrate team milestones, recognise work anniversaries, and show employee appreciation!
These meetings are also perfect for bonding activities, such as interdepartmental talent shows and holiday-themed events (e.g. a Halloween photo contest).
How to achieve this: Start your meeting with a fun game or check-in question to break the ice. You can set up an open-ended poll, such as "What was your proudest achievement this quarter?" This sets the right tone and energy, keeping everyone motivated, inspired, and engaged.
To further strengthen that sense of community, consider a ‘spotlight a colleague’ segment. Put one to two employees on an ‘honour chair’ as the others talk about the contributions, successes, and attributes they love about their peers. A few individuals can speak briefly while the rest can chime in the chat.
A sample 'honour chair' session where bosses and peers take turns to affirm a teammate, via voice or chat
Promote belonging among employees
Inclusivity in an all-hands meeting means giving every employee—regardless of their background, role, or location—a chance to be heard. Just asking for feedback isn’t enough. True inclusivity involves actively including all voices in shaping the company’s direction.
How to achieve this: To encourage open and honest communication, allow employees to vote on ideas, submit questions, or share feedback anonymously. You can keep the Q&A accessible for a reasonable time period. An extended Q&A supports employees from various time zones, gives them time to think, and includes those who missed the live session.
7 quick tips: How to host a successful all-hands meeting
McKinsey & Company says it best:
Better meetings mean you spend the rest of your time feeling more purposeful in carrying out your work.
If you want your all-staff meeting to be engaging and productive, these actions will take you there. Here’s how to run an all-hands your employees will look forward to. Take what resonates—and for a deeper study, dive into each tip in the sequel to this guide (coming soon!).
1. Collect questions ahead of the meeting
Create a Q&A session on Pigeonhole Live and ask your employees to submit their questions a few days or weeks before the meeting. Do this to:
- Identify common issues, ideas, or concerns based on the questions, and prioritise the ones that matter the most to your employees and business
- Give your senior leaders or speakers time to read and prepare their responses to the questions you’ve gathered
- Cover the topics your employees care about in your meeting agenda by incorporating some of them into presentations
2. Develop a well-rounded agenda
Set an agenda that combines informative content with interactive elements. The structure and sequence will depend on how much time you have (at Pigeonhole Live, we dedicate 1 ½ hours to our all-hands meetings).
Feel free to switch it up to keep things fresh, but usually, your agenda might look something like this:
- Icebreaker activity (5 minutes)
- Announcements and celebrations (10 minutes)
- CEO speech (10 minutes)
- Team/departmental highlights (20 minutes)
- Interactive Q&A session (15 minutes)
- Optional social time (10 minutes)
Create an Agenda in Pigeonhole Live, complete with Speaker profiles and photos, and share it with your employees before the all-hands meeting
3. Ensure a smooth tech setup
For a seamless all-hands meeting—whether online, in-person, or hybrid—use video conferencing tools paired with good audio/visual equipment like projectors and speakers. Test everything in advance, including interactive elements like quizzes, polls, and Q&A.
For hybrid meetings, prepare the venue and ensure everyone can see and hear you clearly. And last but not least, prioritise the needs of remote participants to promote inclusivity and engagement across all meeting formats.
4. Assign a moderator
Tap a team member who can act as the moderator. They should be someone you can rely on to do multiple tasks during the meeting:
- Greet everyone
- Monitor remote attendees
- Launch polls and slides
- Ensure you stick to the agenda
- Manage the Q&A session
5. Handle sensitive topics
Sometimes, sensitive topics like layoffs and restructuring come up in an all-hands meeting. Before breaking the news, train your leaders to speak with clarity and empathy. Explain in detail why and how you decided and what the impact will be.
Actively listen to someone expressing strong emotion, setting aside judgement and offering to speak with them separately after the meeting. Give employees time to process the information, reassure them that support is available, and provide contacts for further questions.
6. Provide summaries and action items
Put together a summary of key takeaways and next steps. You can generate this document using AI-powered summarisation or note-taking tools, such as Zoom’s AI Companion, Microsoft Teams' Meeting Insights, or Otter.ai.
This document lets those who missed the meeting catch up instantly and helps teams track their goals, responsibilities, and timelines.
7. Address unanswered questions after the meeting
If you created a Q&A session in Pigeonhole, you can leave it open after the meeting. This allows you to track unanswered questions and group them according to theme, department, and importance.
Department heads can then address specific questions and concerns within their teams to ensure no important issue is overlooked.
This form of asynchronous information is more effective and efficient than following up on them via emails, one-on-one meetings, or other channels.
💡 Pro tip: Use our AI Insights—currently in preview mode—to understand trending topics from your Q&A. You can also quickly gauge employee sentiment based on their questions, comments, and reactions. Q&A Insights can generate data minutes after a meeting, helping you take action faster.
Some must-have tools to add to your all-hands meeting tech stack
Through custom integrations, you can easily add these tools to your existing tech stack. They play various roles in enhancing your all-hands so you can say goodbye to dull and unproductive meetings.
- Video conferencing: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex
- Audience or employee engagement: Pigeonhole Live, Zoom Apps, and Microsoft Teams Q&A and Polls App
- Presentations: Pigeonhole Live’s Microsoft PowerPoint add-in and Google Slides add-on
- Transcription and note-taking: Pigeonhole Live’s AI Insights, Otter.ai, Zoom AI Companion, and Microsoft Teams Meeting Insights
- Follow-ups: Pigeonhole Live, Slack, Gmail, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams
For a comprehensive list of tools, check out our guide to choosing the best tools for running your all-hands or town hall meetings.
More detailed guides to help you run better all-hands meetings
Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals, you can further deepen your knowledge or develop your skills with these guides (coming soon!):
- How to Run an Engaging All-Hands Meeting (With Agenda Templates)
- 10 Tools You Need To Run a Successful All-Hands and Town Hall Meeting
- Maximising Q&A Sessions for a More Inclusive All-Hands and Town Hall
Launch interactive live Q&A, polls, and quizzes that boost employee engagement
Frequently asked questions about all-hands meetings
What does the term ‘all hands meeting’ mean?
All-hands meeting comes from the well-known phrase ‘all hands on deck,’ which means all crew members on a ship should come together on deck. It signals that everyone, regardless of duty, must be ready to help in an emergency or a time of great need.
At work, it means gathering top management and employees to ensure everyone is aligned on key updates, goals, and initiatives.
What is the frequency of all-hands meetings?
You can set this company-wide gathering according to your culture and communication style. Some teams schedule it monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or as needed.
For instance, a monthly all-hands is enough to keep everyone informed and aligned if you have about 150 employees under 5 departments, each meeting once a week.
How do you make an all-hands meeting interactive?
To make an all-hands meeting interactive, mix informative content with engaging elements like Q&A sessions, polls, quizzes, and chances for employees to give feedback or ask questions. Add fun activities, celebrate milestones, and include everyone, no matter their role or location, to create an engaging atmosphere.
