What Are All Hands Meetings and Why Are They Important?

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way organizations operate. In-person meetings have been replaced with video meetings because they are cost-effective and better suited for collaboration.

In fact, according to research, a whopping 98 percent of respondents believed that video conferencing enhances relationship-building within and outside the business. Additionally, 90 percent of respondents stated that video conferencing enhances their ability to communicate their views.

This has also affected the way all-hands meetings are now being conducted. When well planned, all-hands meetings can help foster the company culture as well as enhance alignment and transparency within your team.

However, if all-hands meeting is a new concept to you or if you're trying to figure out how to make yours more effective, here is all you need to know.

What’s an All-hands Meeting?

The term ‘all-hands meeting’ is derived from the ‘all hands on deck’ phrase, which signals that all the ship’s crew members should get on deck.

It is an organization-wide regular meeting that brings together the leaders, stakeholders, and employees to discuss important matters that affect the whole organization.

Once your organization gets to a size where keeping everyone updated is difficult, that should be your signal that you need all-hands meetings.

Why Should You Run All-Hands Meetings?

You should run all-hands meetings as it:

1. Ensures Everyone Is Aligned and Updated

All-hands meetings allow you to update employees on business-related events and share organization-wide information. All-hands meetings also enable you to get all of your business's stakeholders aligned with your business's strategy and goals.

2. Promotes Company Culture

All-hand meetings are great avenues for enhancing and demonstrating your company culture. During these meetings, you get to talk about your organization’s mission, vision, and values.

You also get to review your progress toward achieving your goals. This can be very powerful because it shows people their work has a higher purpose other than just generating revenue.

3. Gives Everyone a Voice

At least twenty percent of the all-hands agenda should be dedicated to Q&A so that you have sufficient time to address the most important questions.

Having a Q&A session will enable you to discover the most pressing issues and enhance transparency in your organization.

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4. Celebrates Successes

All-hands meetings offer a great platform for celebrating team members' achievements. Recognizing your employees' efforts can be a great morale booster.

5. Connect HQ with Other Offices and Remote Workers

If your organization has teams spread around the globe, virtual all-hands meetings can enable you to cultivate a sense of community by helping you bring everybody together.

How to Host a Great All-hands Meeting?

You can host a successful all-hands meeting by following these steps:

1. Set a Fixed Date and Invite Everyone Early

You should have a fixed schedule for your all-hands meetings. That way, people will get used to them and include them in their schedules.

2. Craft a Clearly Structured Agenda

All your meetings should have a clear agenda with agreed timings. You should allocate time to each section of the meeting based on your organization’s priorities.

3. Ensure Your Tech Setup is Flawless

If you’re holding a virtual all-hands meeting, you should ensure that every participant enjoys an excellent online experience. This means that you should choose a video conferencing tool that’s reliable. Excellent audio is also vital.

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4. Sync with the AV Technician

Before your meeting, you should inform your AV technician about the formats that will be in use (audio, video, slides) and all the interactive activities that you’ll incorporate.

5. Put all Slides in One Place

To prevent technical hitches, you should get the speakers to upload all their slides into a single master slide deck. This will enable you to collaborate more effectively and enhance the flow of content.

6. Appoint a Remote Champion

Consider having a dedicated facilitator for your team that’s attending the meeting virtually.

7. Have Various Speakers Participate

Allocating too much time to a single content-heavy presentation can be draining for everyone. So it would help if you made your meeting more dynamic by allowing various people to make presentations. 

8. Engage with Your Team

Your employees shouldn’t just sit in all-hands meetings passively. You should engage them through interactive sessions like Q&A slots and live polls, as well as let them give you real-time feedback.

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9. Conclude the Meeting with Clear, Actionable Steps

At the end of your all-hands meeting, everyone who attended the meeting should leave with something tangible. So prepare a slide that outlines the keep points as well as the next steps.

All-hands meetings can help enhance the company’s culture and foster relationships between co-workers. It has various benefits, and companies should host all-hands meetings regularly.

If you’re conducting a virtual all-hands meeting, there are plenty of video conferencing tools that you can use like, Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and more.

It would be even better if you record and transcribe your all-hands meeting. This will enable everyone who couldn’t attend to watch or read it later. 

How GMR Transcription Can Help

If you are looking to transcribe your virtual all-hands meetings, GMR Transcription Services, Inc. can help. With our excellent Zoom meeting transcription services, we can transcribe your meeting video with an unrivaled accuracy of 99 percent.

Our transcribers are 100 percent US-based humans who have plenty of experience in audio, video, research, and business transcription. Register today to use our transcription services.