Holding an all-hands meeting sends a message to your employees that you have important information to convey. However, it can also show employees that you value their input into company operations and want to keep them informed about company news and performance. When done well, an all hands meeting can boost morale during good times and calm the nerves of your team if the company has hit a rough patch. Running these meetings isn’t easy and requires careful strategy and planning. Here are a few all hands meeting ideas to increase your chances of success and help you win over the opinions of your staff.

Host the meeting on a Friday

Your employees typically have meetings and deadlines throughout the week, which means it will be hard to find a time that works for everyone in the company. However, you want to find a time where almost everyone will be available to attend. Many companies prefer to have their all-hands meetings on Friday mornings or afternoons. People tend to schedule fewer internal or client meetings on Fridays, which means fewer people will be inconvenienced by this event. Depending on your company size and operations, you could provide lunch for your employees as an incentive or thank-you for attending the meeting. Some companies even end the meeting around two or three in the afternoon and then let their employees leave early for the weekend that day. Not only does hosting an all hands meeting on a Friday make scheduling easier, it also creates a buffer if you have to deliver bad news. Your employees will have the weekend to process any news and move on from it instead of returning to their desks to speculate how the news will affect them.

Give presenters time to prepare

Unless you’re hosting an emergency all-hands meeting, give key stakeholders and presenters time to prepare their statements. Not only will this help your management team make the best presentations possible, it will make sure your employees get all of the information they need. There are a few steps you can take to make sure all of the presenters are prepared before the meeting starts:

• Ask presenters to create visual aids with performance data and quarterly results to help employees understand the information.
• Set a deadline a week before the presentation for presenters to submit notes and visuals.
• Review the submissions a few days before the presentation to see if additional information is needed.
• Arrive at the meeting hall early to get up the presentations and make sure the audio/visual equipment is working.

Senior managers might even want to run through the presentations of younger managers to make sure everything is covered before they present. This process should become easier as more all hands meetings are held in the company.

Be transparent

The best managers will balance the positive results with opportunities to improve. This helps with employee morale while motivating them to work harder in the next quarter.

While it would be nice if all hands meetings only covered good news, that’s not always the case. An all-hands meeting could be used to announce layoffs, report losses for the quarter, and discuss changes in leadership. The best way to handle bad news is to calmly explain what is happening within the company and how it will affect employees.

For complete transparency, explain the factors leading up to the decision, options that were on the table, and underlying causes that will affect the company. This information proves you’re making the best decisions possible for the company even if they’re uncomfortable to work with. Fast Company reported that 60 percent of CEOs think their organization is empathetic to employees, but only 25 percent of employees agree with that.

The top four ways that leadership teams can show empathy is by verbally acknowledging that you care and are listening, making eye contact, showing emotion, and asking or answering questions. Most, if not all, of these traits can be displayed in an all-hands meeting. Failing to be transparent or to clearly deliver bad news can damage morale more than honesty and distract employees from their work. You might think you’re helping the company by keeping some information to yourself, but your employees could resent your attempt at secrecy.

All hands meeting agenda

How you present the meeting is important but not as important as the actual message itself. If you want your employees to attend your all hands meetings, then you need to make sure you’re providing valuable information. While you may be tempted to only share the good news, this won’t always motivate your employees to work harder or give them the information they need to improve the company’s performance.

Crafting an all hands meeting agenda is a delicate balance. Companies typically start with reviews of the past quarter and plans for the next ones, though this can be shuffled around if there is major news to report. However you craft your agenda, make sure it’s created with employee morale in mind, or you could find attendance dwindling.

Review the past month or quarter

One of the goals of all hands meetings is to involve your entire staff in the performance of the company. While the finance department might know how much the company is making and what the overall growth is, the marketing, human resources, and operations teams might not.

Consider inviting each department leader to give a quick five to 10-minute recap of their quarter, including their performance, wins, and losses. By the end of the meeting, everyone will be on the same page as far as whether or not the company is hitting its goals and if they need to improve. While it’s rare for a company to only report sales growth every quarter, these meetings can help you find good news even if you’re not seeing the revenue you need. Ask each department head to highlight one good point from their team. For example, one sales member might have reached a record quota for bringing new business into the company or a marketing initiative could have gone viral and boosted the overall brand. Even if your quarter review isn’t all good news, these smaller acknowledgments will show your employees that you notice their hard work and appreciate they effort they put in.

Look ahead to the next quarter and year

Many companies use all hands meetings to start with past performance reviews and then talk about what’s ahead. They might use this time to announce a new product that’s rolling out in the next few months or introduce plans for a different division or building that will grow in the next five years. If your performance wasn’t on the level that your employees had hoped for the quarter, this is a good time to boost overall morale with plans for improvement. Your strategy to look ahead can be as small as changes to the marketing strategy or as large as a rebranding. The overall goal is to give your team something to look forward to and motivation to keep working toward growth until the next all hands review. Try to announce future projects and exciting new initiatives toward the end of your all-hands meeting. It’s more effective to cover the bad news and then end on a good note. Your employees don’t want to feel like they’re called into team meetings just to hear bad news about sales and performance.

Major changes are best told in-person

If you do have to deliver bad news, make sure you present it in person. This gives your staff an opportunity to ask questions and shows that you’re committed to their well-being. In an article for Forbes, Robert Bies offered 10 Commandments for delivering bad news within a company. He urges leaders to deliver bad news as soon as possible instead of letting rumors continue to circulate around the company.

While the last section recommended planning presentations ahead of time and holding meetings on Fridays, this isn’t always possible. If you’re delivering news that will affect the whole company, holding an emergency all-hands meeting can prevent rumors from spreading and worrying employees. The longer you wait, the more nervous your staff will get about their futures. If your employees are engaged in the success of your company then they’re likely to be interested in all-hands meeting. By following these tips, you can ensure that any news (good or bad) is received in the best possible way.