Tips for top-tier town halls

An invite to a town hall meeting showing up in an employee’s inbox can garner a bevy of reactions. It can be viewed as an opportunity to share perspectives and challenges with the rest of the company, but in far too many organizations, the town hall meeting conjures dread, with wandering talking points and a lack of engaging material.

At Ragan’s 2024 Internal Communications Conference late last year, Ginny Inman, senior communications specialist at SAS, said that in her organization, moving branding away from the term “town hall” is a big first step.

“I’m not going to call them town halls,” Inman said. “These are internal events, and they help build connection. They give a face to your employees who probably don’t even know what your leaders look like or sound like.

Inman’s other talking points included:

Planning and buy-in make the big difference in your internal events