Town halls — whether quarterly, semi-annually, or whatever the cadence — have mostly followed the same format since their inception . Think slides with crammed text, one-way dialogues only heard by those in the room, and a tome-like recap email.

But this stiff format isn’t inclusive or engaging in today’s flexible work landscape.

You need town halls that are accessible to everyone, company-wide — no matter where they’re working from. An interactive and live streamed virtual town hall is your solution. 

Take Rite Aid, for example. The drug store giant took to Vimeo in 2020 to host their first-ever virtual town hall meeting for 3,000 attendees. More employees joined this single meeting than the total number of participants in the last ten years of in-person Rite Aid meetings.

We won’t return to how it was. Video isn’t a COVID-19 solution, it’s a modern solution for the new workplace.
Peter Strella, Director, Communications & Creative Media Services at Rite Aid

Boost your own employee engagement by learning how to host interactive virtual town halls with the right internal communications tools. These meetings will give your employees a chance to learn about your company’s strategies, voice concerns, and ask questions.

Ready? Let’s get into the details of how to effectively plan, host, and replicate a successful town hall from start to finish.  

In this article:

    What is a virtual town hall?

    A virtual town hall is a live-streamed forum where  leaders can share context, decision-making thought processes, and relevant environmental factors to both in-person and remote teams. It’s also an opportunity for an audience to get company alignment, provide feedback and pose questions. 

    This meeting is most effective when leaders genuinely seek to share objective information and hear authentic feedback.

    What is another word for town hall meeting?

    Town hall meetings are often called all staff meetings, all hands meetings, and all hands on deck meetings. Some companies have internal names for these meets too. For example, Splash, an event marketing platform, refers to their town hall meetings as ‘town calls.’

    When it comes to all-hands and town hall meetings, some leadership teams take a more “state of a union” approach, where business leaders give a high-level overview of key business messages and updates. Others prefer a more traditional structure  that focuses on engaging the audience with a live Q&A. No matter your organization’s format preferences or needs, your presentation needs to be designed for a virtual platform.

    Five benefits of a virtual town hall

    It’s clear that today’s workforce wants to work remotely—which means they want town halls to be virtual: 46% of workers say they’d be willing to take a 5% pay cut to work out-of-office for at least a portion of their workweek, according to Owl Labs. What’s more, one in three employees say they’d quit their job if they were no longer able to work remotely.

    Remote employment isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, so it’s critical that leadership teams tailor presentations not only for the audience, but for the virtual town hall meeting platform they’re using.

    The popularity of remote work is just one of the reasons to switch to virtual town halls. Here are some of the best reasons to start producing a virtual presentation for your next town hall event.

    1. Foster transparency

    Ideally, your virtual town hall content is structured to be relevant to everyone in the audience, regardless of department, business, unit, or location. It also allows for all team members to have the opportunity to ask questions and probe deeper into meeting topics.

    Most employees experience remote conflict at some point in their careers — 19% say they have experienced it with their leader, and 65% say they’ve experienced it with teammates, according to research from MyPerfectResume. And although stress and personality clashes contribute to workplace conflicts, workers say that “lack of transparency” and “lack of honesty about something important” account for 18% of workplace conflicts

    Virtual town halls are a chance to break down those barriers. Participants can see presenters and attendees, ask questions openly, and pick up on verbal and non-verbal cues. This visibility helps keep employees engaged and build trust — improving the flow of information across departments, teams, and individual roles.

    2. Showcase teams and employees

    Virtual town halls are a great venue to shed light on different departments and individuals doing great work. The benefits here are two-fold: first, teammates may be recognized and can take pride in their contributions; and second, teams who don’t normally interact are exposed to the priorities and successes of others.

    In a remote workforce, it can be difficult to celebrate teams’ or individuals’ wins across the whole organization — but virtual town halls can make it easier to share these successes. And small efforts can go far: a company-wide shoutout for an individual’s job well-done can often make more of an impact than private, individual recognition via phone or email. 

    Staff members who receive largely public recognition are up to three times as likely to feel confident they “belong” in their position.

    Source: Gallup

    If you’re making a company-wide announcement celebrating an individual, be mindful of the employee’s personal preferences and cultural norms. Some employees may not be comfortable with public praise.

    3. Reinforce company culture

    Company culture can be tough to maintain remotely, but leadership teams can help bolster a sense of belonging in employees by expressing care for them. The Harvard Business Review polled nearly 13,000 people across the world about their organization’s “culture style,” or “the shared, pervasive, enduring, and implicit behaviors and norms” that exist throughout a company. The top attribute reported was “caring,” which reflects a collaborative environment in the workplace.

    One way to show employees you care about them and the company’s culture is by keeping communication channels open. Leadership teams can boost staff confidence by:

    • Sharing high-level updates, even when the news is hard.
    • Emphasizing company values through personal and professional success (and failure) stories.
    • Reminding employees about available benefits and initiatives.

    In turn, this type of open communication can reinforce important organizational values and foster trust within the company.

    4. Strengthen executive and team communications

    An employee may not regularly see or interact with executives on a day-to-day basis — especially in a remote setting. Virtual town halls offer a window into the dialogue and mindset of the organization’s leadership team. They also allow for real-time staff participation, as you get them to share their input via online chat, live polls, quizzes, and Q&As.

    This can help humanize a leadership team by providing faces, voices, and personalities with their names. And, in challenging times, it can remind employees that leaders are people, too. Michael Weinstein, the Video Studio Lead at Deloitte Global says, “when it’s live, you hear that person, you can communicate with them, and it really humanizes them as well.”

    Live streaming virtual town halls also facilitates more engagement, collaboration, and peer-to-peer connections at work. A recent report from GlobalWebIndex and Vimeo found that video had a positive impact on employee engagement:

    Data showing how video makes employees feel more engaged in comparison to employees who don't use video.
    Source: GlobalWebIndex and Vimeo

    5. Align teams and address important concerns

    One of the values of a virtual town hall Q&A is that executives can hear feedback directly from those whom they lead. The spontaneity of real-time Q&As and employee engagement allows executives to proactively address feedback before it’s fraught over or distorted.

    Communication isn’t only about saying one thing in one place. The most effective workplace communication is reinforced over time, across channels, and in different formats so that it is accessible to all and available in any individual’s preferred channel.

    How to run a virtual town hall meeting

    From planning your meeting’s flow to prepping the live stream setup, we’ve laid out the nitty-gritty details for hosting a virtual town hall meeting that’s a smashing hit.

    Step #1: Figure out the logistics to set your agenda 

    Start with the meeting agenda—which will include topics, speakers, the meeting date, and the venue.  

    Ask yourself: what topic(s) would you cover? Try to limit these to 2-3 so you can go deep, not broad, into each topic. And take a look at our sample virtual town hall meeting agenda at the end of this section to help you craft your own series of events.

    Settle on who’ll be speaking next. This should include your CEO, but also department heads or team leaders so they can update everyone on the progress each area of the company is making.

    Pro tip: Be inclusive in selecting speakers by getting camera-shy people on board as Ampersand does in their meetings.

    “Some of the best people who are good at explaining an application aren’t necessarily the best people who are great in front of a live camera, so why take them out of the picture? We’re finding that the more that we pre-record our trainings, people are happier and less nervous about it.”
    Seth Weingarten, VP of Network Operations at Ampersand.

    Once done, work out a date for the meeting that suits everyone’s schedules and iron out the meeting’s structure and flow. For instance, settle on how long the CEO will speak, who’ll pass the mic to whom, and so on. This increases your chances of the virtual meeting running smoothly.

    Lastly, decide your venue. Make sure to choose a location that will accommodate all your live streaming hardware during your virtual town hall. 

    If you happen to be conducting an in-person meeting, look for a place that’ll accommodate everyone. Pay special attention to seating. A theater-like arrangement sends the message that employees are just going to be listening. A roundtable arrangement with all attendees in close proximity, in contrast, indicates attendees are welcome for participation.

    Once you’ve locked in your location, it’s time to lock in your meeting agenda, too. Use our sample agenda template as a foundation to help you build out your own plan:

    Virtual Town Hall Meeting: Agenda Example

    TimeTopic of DiscussionSpeaker or Presenter
    10:00 – 10:15 a.m.Welcome and announcements: This is the part that should set the tone of your meeting.CEO
    10:16 – 10:30 a.m.Notable company and business updates: Introduce any new team members, make team or individual recognition shout-outs, birthdays or anniversaries, and then any “heavier” topics that may be serving as the “elephant in the room.”CEO, CFO, CMO (or TBD)
    10:31 – 10:50 a.m.Update from Marketing (or other major) DepartmentCMO (or TBD)
    10:51 – 11:20 a.m.Update: Key Topic #1PM (or TBD)
    11:21 – 11:40 a.m.Update: Key Topic #2PM (or TBD)
    11:41 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.Open Q&A: Include any curated questions that the presenter/moderator has collected, also.CEO, CMO, PM, CFO

    Once you’ve checked off all these tasks from your list, start sending out invites. Make sure you send out the agenda beforehand and include the topics so employees can come prepared with their questions.

    Step #2: Set up your live stream

    Live streaming your virtual town hall or hybrid event is important in today’s world of remote work. Live streaming allows for more reach and connectivity across different time zones, as employees can join from their remote workspaces anywhere in the world.

    We have a detailed guide on how to stream your town hall meeting, but here’s a quick 3-step blueprint to get your started.

    • Ready your hardware: You’ll need a professional grade camera, microphone for the audio, and an AV cable to bring in the audio stream. Don’t forget an encoder to convert raw data into a viewable live stream and a switcher to go back and forth between various audio and video sources.
    • Get your software rolling: The right live streaming platform turns your computer into a live production studio. If you’re still in the market for a solution, we’ve got a few tips below on how to choose the right one for your business.
    • Test drive before your stream: Lastly, preview your stream to see everything’s in place. Make sure you check your internet speed to prevent your stream from buffering. Don’t forget to arrange a power backup — you won’t want an outage to disrupt your meeting’s flow.

    Once your software and hardware are in place, it’s time to create your virtual town hall “script.”

    Step #3: Draft your content

    Here’s where you decide what to say. A successful virtual town hall meeting packs in concise and intentional content. So a good starting point is creating an outline detailing what you want to cover.

    With the key pointers in a document, flesh out each section by asking yourself: “How can I deliver this information in a manner that motivates employees?”

    Here are four tips for better attendee engagement:

    • Use data and customer case studies to tell stories. Instead of regurgitating a laundry list of numbers, be selective with the statistics you share. Use the problem-agitate-solve (PAS) technique: highlight the problem, rub it a bit, share results backed with 1-2 impactful numbers.
    • Leverage user-generated content (in this case, customer- or employee-generated). Axalta Coating Systems, for example, shares content their users submit in the form of videos in their live town halls. “Because we have to certify our users, we have them submit videos to us as part of their certification,” says Steve Hamaday, Virtual Training Manager at Axalta.
    • Tap into employees’ emotions to engage them. As an example, the team at Buffer has a 10-min session on celebrations in their town halls where they cover company, as well as employee, achievements like new pets, marriages, new homes, and more.
    • Shake up your content’s format. Instead of running slide after slide in your presentation, add tutorials and recorded presentation clips. This way, you’ll be talking less and showing more – for example, you could demonstrate a new feature.

    Now that you have an idea about what you’ll say, let’s figure out how you’ll say it.

    Step #4: Prepare your presentation

    Now it’s time to add some movement to your words and package all the information in an engaging presentation.

    It may sound easy, but creating engaging slides takes some effort. But we’re here to help make it simple for you. Consider these tips when creating your presentation:

    • Aim to use no more than 10 slides to cover your topic in 20 minutes.
    • Write easy-to-read slides with minimal text. Use a legible font at 30-point size.
    • Diversify your slides’ format. Aim to position only 5 text-heavy slides at a time. 
    • Break slides up with video tutorials, GIFs, and slides with graphs. 
    • Wherever possible, arrange content in six bullet points per slide containing six words per point.

    Feeling prepared? Good. Now let’s think more about attendee engagement.

    Step #5: Work out your engagement plan

    Since the objective of a virtual town hall meeting is to facilitate two-way conversations, it’s essential you don’t miss out on engagement opportunities.

    Here are a few ways to spark engagement:

    • Open the ground for questions early. You can start sourcing questions as early as you start sending out invites. It’s also a good idea to pause after every session as HelpScout does in their town hall meetings to let questions pour in before moving forward.
    • Use a variety of polling formats. Engage your audience with live chat throughout the meeting and a dedicated live Q&A session at the end. It will be even better if you can make it anonymous. After reviewing nearly 10,000 entries, we found that 78% of employees prefer questioning anonymously
    • Have icebreakers ready to go. Anything fun and light-hearted can help thaw any awkwardness that may arise. For example, the Buffer team has experimented with getting attendees to meditate and stretch together (a fun pose can get everyone laughing for sure!). Similarly, at Vimeo, we’ve had success with video get-togethers where everyone introduces their pets.

    Again, the goal of your virtual town hall event is to start a dialogue with your staff members and attendees, not to perform a monologue! So two-way communication is key.

    Need more ideas on how to engage your remote workforce?

    Learn how leadership teams use video to virtually unite, align, and motivate multiple teams with town halls, training workshops, and more.

    Step #6: Plan for feedback

    Without sourcing feedback, you can’t really tell how well you are bridging the communication gap with employees. 

    Three helpful ways to gather feedback include:

    • Conduct anonymous polls and follow-up surveys. The former can pose questions like, “Was this session helpful?” And the latter can dig deep, asking open-ended questions like, “What did you enjoy the most?” and “How do you think we can make this meeting better for you?” You can also leverage surveys to have employees rate their experience on a scale of one to ten.
    • Solicit feedback from newbies. Ask new employees for their thoughts on your virtual town hall meeting. Gauge how they liked the event and ask if the information was clear.
    • Look at your livestream analytics. Vimeo’s analytics dashboard helps you pull stats on watch times and total live viewers to understand who tuned in and how long the meeting engaged your staff.

    Seven tips for a successful virtual town hall

    Now that you know the benefits of hosting a virtual town hall — and you’ve planned and scheduled it — it’s time to execute your vision. Don’t forget these six tips when you’re preparing to present.

    Tip 1: Choose a live streaming platform you can count on

    When it’s time to choose a virtual town hall platform, there are certain things you should consider if you want to provide an efficient and effective streaming experience. Here are four things to look for in your live streaming platform:

    • Technology that provides a high quality stream: A spotty stream can be really disruptive (and annoying). Look for a solution that provides professional live streaming tools to help you minimize technical hiccups. Pro tip: Build company credibility by customizing your live town hall meetings and hosting them in a video library.
    • Security with single sign-on (SSO): This critical feature lets you control who in your company has access to the live event. Be sure to consider options that allow control with the SSO feature and domain whitelisting.
    • Automatic archiving: A key benefit of live events is that global teams can access the content remotely. It’s important to pick a service that makes it easy for employees to access the event long after it’s finished.
    • Ease of use: Live streaming is hard enough, so plan to use a platform that has an intuitive user interface (UI), branding options, and interactive tools to help you deliver an engaging live experience without the headache.

    Tip 2: Create internal alignment early

    Work with leadership and the “frequent flyers” (those who typically present in these meetings) to align on the agenda, content, and outstanding speaker list as early as possible.

    The agenda should be decided at least 10 days in advance so that folks have enough time – at least five business days – to source or develop content, rehearse talking points, and add finishing touches before show time.

    Tip 3: Operate with your attendees in mind

    Based on pulse checks, feedback, employee commentary, and FAQs, plan an agenda around what employees need and want to know.

    Prioritize your agenda based on topics that are most relevant to your high-level business objectives, as well as topics that employees resurface over time. For example, you may want to talk about quarterly or yearly goals and employees may want more context in executive changes or decisions.

    Remember that people have short attention spans. A meeting longer than 75 minutes can risk people dropping at the hour mark. 

    Similarly, a meeting packed with content can disengage employees for two reasons. First, the attendees may only get the surface details of each topic. Second, they may not be able to discern what information to prioritize or what actions to take away from the meeting.

    Strike a balance of providing the most relevant content, reiterating priorities, and providing clear next steps within the time frame you’ve allowed for your town hall.

    Tip 4: Develop an event checklist

    Between the agenda, the necessary hardware and software, the internet, the speaker, and the attendees, virtual town halls can have a lot of moving parts. To make things easier, develop an event timeline and checklist. 

    A timeline will help you stay on top of planning and scheduling timely outreach to the right people. Use a digital tool like Google Calendar to add reminders, due dates, and alerts for your timeline to-do items. A checklist helps you cover your technological, logistical, content, and communications bases. Your virtual event checklist may contain:

    • Name of producer
    • Name of tech support professional
    • Attendee invite details
    • Speaker prep details
    • Employee reminders and notifications
    • Slides or other event content

    By preparing for all the tasks you have to complete, and planning your time leading up to (and including) your presentation, you’ll be able to control what you can and let go of the rest easier.

    Download our Virtual Events Checklist

    Tip 5: Be consistent but not monotonous

    As a best practice, strive to have a consistent cadence for your virtual town hall meetings. This helps set expectations by allowing attendees to not only plan around it — which increases their likelihood of attending — but also builds trust, as employees know executives will provide important news on a regular basis.

    And it’s especially important in remote work environments to maintain consistent communication. McKinsey reports that workers who feel they’re included in detailed organizational communications are “nearly five times more likely” to claim increased productivity than those who don’t feel included.

    As far as format goes, recurring meeting segments help build interest, trust, and reliability. For example at Vimeo, folks know that there will always be an update on the business of the business, and there will always be a product spotlight. Recurring agenda items help build some level of interest and anticipation, as these are things (most) employees hear about on a regular basis.

    It’s equally important to surprise and delight employees. Give attendees a peek into something totally out of the ordinary, something that will excite and inspire them.

    Tip 6: Strive for accessibility and simplicity

    Make it easy for employees to tune into the meeting itself. Generate one link and share it universally.

    In addition:

    • Check that the audio is working
    • Turn on automatic closed captioning 
    • Make sure the speakers’ names are visible
    • If you hold the meeting on Vimeo, chapter key sections or movements to help attendees jump to segments relevant to them.

    Tip 7: Recap and record your event video for later viewing

    Some of your staff members won’t be able to log on for your live stream, so make sure you record and summarize your virtual town hall event. You should also send the video out on the same day so absent employees can watch it on-demand at their convenience.

    When you send out the email or newsletter that contains the recorded video link, include an event recap and any meeting notes that would be helpful to your employees. Have them jot down any questions, comments, or concerns they may have about the information that was presented.

    You can also repurpose your live stream content. Rite Aid, for example, reuses their live streams in their onboarding and training modules for new employees.

    Finally, let’s move onto some frequently asked questions about virtual town halls.

    Virtual town hall FAQs

    Virtual town hall meetings are still a relatively new practice for today’s companies, so there’s still a lot to learn. Check out these virtual town hall FAQs to help you gain a better understanding of the process.

    What is the purpose of a virtual town hall meeting? 

    The main purpose of a virtual town hall meeting is to encourage and support two-way communication and conversations between leadership teams and employees through an event live stream. Leadership is updating the  entire company about projects, business results, upcoming events and campaigns, and any other pressing work-related information through the virtual town hall.

    What is the best platform to use for my company’s virtual town hall event? 

    You can start pre-building your entire event right now with Vimeo’s virtual event platform — no developing chops needed. It’s easy to use and provides both presenters and attendees with a great experience. Using built-in video editing, hosting, and management tools, you can also turn your event recording into powerful evergreen content.

    How do I troubleshoot town hall live stream errors? 

    First, make sure to check your equipment’s functionality, like screen sharing permissions. Secondly, designate an individual who is present at your town hall live stream event as the “tech admin” (preferably someone in IT!). Lastly, go into the event  anticipating what could go wrong and preparing for these scenarios. For example, if you know the location in which you’re holding the event has a weak Wi-Fi signal, bring the proper equipment to hard-wire your internet connection.

    How do you make virtual town halls fun? 

    Make sure to include at least one “non-work” element in your event, like a silly icebreaker. And don’t skimp on the celebrations! As mentioned earlier, when you’re planning your virtual event agenda, make sure you leave space to recognize team members’ accomplishments and achievements. And shout-out any upcoming employee milestones and team celebrations. A little recognition can go a long way.

    Wrap up: Reinventing virtual town halls 

    Hosting an engaging virtual town hall event presents a great opportunity for leadership teams to connect with employees. Remote and hybrid jobs have offered many benefits for the workforce, but some people can start to feel isolated without regular check-ins with colleagues and management. Virtual town hall meetings allow your organization to align on goals and get employee questions answered.

    With Vimeo’s new event platform, you can live stream your virtual town hall with no tech experience necessary. Vimeo’s native editing, hosting, and management tools make it simple to plan an engaging virtual event and execute it from start to finish. You’re not hosting your grandfather’s town hall presentation, but Vimeo makes it so user friendly that even he could understand.

    Choose the right tools for your virtual event and see how live streaming can help transform your organization’s town halls today.

    Learn how to create transformational town halls for your company.

    Originally published on December 5, 2019 by Emily Gover, edited May 19, 2022, and updated in April 2023 for relevancy.