Holding company information meetings for staff

The full and original article was published Green leaf

Leaders bringing all staff together periodically to discuss business issues has long been considered a best practice. Depending on the size of the firm, they are held monthly, every other month or sometimes quarterly. Even with workforces increasingly dispersed around the country, leaders are utilizing technological solutions (video conferencing, webinars, blogs) to bring people together.

Leaders use all-staff meetings in a number of ways, especially as a means to:

• teach employees about external influences impacting the business,
• celebrate successes and recognize hard work,
• explain upcoming changes and challenges,
• maintain a sense of workplace unity,
• ask for employee input and listen to their feedback, and
• model what respectful and effective communication looks like

To have those all-staff meetings, but make them meaningful. Boring and un-engaging staff meetings are deadly. A few tips for keeping them fresh:

• Lively, honest debates are stimulating. Generate as many as you can.
• Make sure management does not do all the talking.
• Make sure employees understand what you are talking about. (I was in an all-staff meeting at a government agency last year. An endless number of acronyms and jargon were being thrown around and it was clear many employees did not understand.)
• Continue to communicate clearly how employees’ efforts impact the larger business goals.

Periodically, ask employees if the meetings are beneficial and what could be done to make them more useful.