Hear Ye! Hear Ye! My first town hall experience.

As I made my way down the stairwell with the Managing Director one step in front of me, I was in awe watching a colossal amount of people emerge from their offices and pile into an awkward room somewhat similar to a basement. A town hall meeting had been scheduled for employees at the Booragoon office to fire questions at two visiting US representatives from the executive team of Alcoa Inc. I’ll be honest and say I had no idea what to expect. Obviously I knew there would be a discussion of some sort but I didn’t exactly know how a town hall meeting operated in action.

I found refuge on the edge of the room behind a few people. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of the lucky few that arrived early and claimed chairs, so I stood with the majority of employees in a room. I stood back, listened and watched very carefully. I took note of the facial expressions of the employees, both those who chose to speak and those who chose to stay silent. I watched the body language and presenting style of the two American representatives, as well as carefully analysed their answers to employees.  If you ask me, as an outsider, I thought they spoke extremely well. They tried to make it personalised and speak with the employees, not at them. They (seemed to be) transparent, authentic and honest; when they didn’t know the answer they admitted it but promised they would follow it up and get back to them. The speakers tried to incorporate humour into their responses, which I believe was done professionally and helped to build rapport with their audience.

In all, I consider my first town hall a beneficial learning experience. It's a great tool to promote two-way dialogue with employees especially during a period of corporate change. It does have it short falls, of course. I noticed that there tended to be two or three common employees who asked a number of questions, leaving the large majority of employees without a voice. Sure, those questions could have been what they were thinking anyway. But there are likely to be some employees that had really good comments and/or feedback for the Americans, but didn’t have the courage to speak up. Alcoa would therefore need to use this tool in conjunction with other tools to maximise employee engagement.

Realising that my knowledge of town hall meetings was lacking, I did some research into what makes up a good town hall. I must say this one ticked pretty much all the boxes. This website I thought would be a good resource for anyone else looking to expand their PR toolkit, providing clear guidelines on how to conduct a town hall meeting (if you're interested). From this list, I was interested in the post-meeting tasks. Things such as creating a public wiki for a Q&A and communicating ideas that have been implemented from the meetings sounded like great initiatives. I know that sometimes these aren't always feasible, but I definitely think they are important considerations. Another interesting thing I found was the use of online technology to conduct town hall meetings, particularly for multi-national corporations like Alcoa. I don't know if it would be as effective as real face-to-face meetings, but could still bring other Alcoa regions together to help maximise efficiencies and develop sound relationships across borders. One example of this technology was cinchcast - there's a link available if you want to read more.

So even if it did mean standing up for an hour in a tiny and hot room, I definitely believe my first town hall experience was a good one. It’s easy to sit back and critique such events, however I know that it is easier said than done. I look forward to trying to use this new-found understanding town hall meetings to produce better outcomes in my future career.

P.S. As previously promised, check out my Instagram danika_welly to see my workspace photo showing my two very different work environments. It certainly keeps me on my toes and makes every day exciting!