Employee "State of the Company" Meetings

phammond

Our CEO would like to implement monthly "State of the Company" meetings during the present economy, but doesn't necessarily want to completely disrupt production. Are any of your companies doing anything similar and, if so, what is working for you to make sure you get sufficient representation of departments to ensure an open line of communication with employees?

Thanks for your input!

Mentel

We conduct employee meetings every quarter. They start out with the CEO discussing our financials. Then we have another subject such as the updated employee handbook, changes to benefits such as 401k or a team building activity. These are held at 5:30 pm right after work and last until 7:30 pm. We feed employees dinner (pizza, cookout, etc) and we pay employees to be there. Our company has 8 locations and about 80% of our employees attend. We are careful to schedule our meetings at times that don't disrupt our operations since we do have times of the year when we have employees working from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm.

Dutch2

We do/did 'bout the same as Mentel... we have quarterly meetings for each division and attendance is mandatory. We pay for the time and provide dinner, catered by a local restaurant or get pizza, etc.. CEO addresses each group and then each Divisional President has his/her time. Next we address any policy changes, company news and upcoming events, personnel recognitions (just married, promotions, new babies, and such). Caution: after about a year or so of quarterly meetings many felt it had become very repetitious and thus boring to those attending. Most everyone stated they would much prefer to be at home that evening with their family and not at a mandatory company meeting. I would imagine that monthly meetings might reach this same situation even sooner. One division did try volunteer meetings; we still paid for the time and provided a meal, less than half of the employees were in attendance.

KSR6450

We used to hold the same type of meetings on a quarterly basis. Ours were scheduled for 45 minutes before we opened and we would supply breakfast. This way everyone knew the meeting had a set end time. xclap

The grumblings and no shows came from the exempt employees who were not receiving compensation for this time. We finally gave it up and the CEO now sends out an e-mail with financial information, progress on our new branches etc. As a bank our financial information is available from our Call Report so we don't have to worry about confidential information being forwarded via e-mail.

Paul in Cannon Beach

Monthly sounds too often unless you are in an industry that has frequent economic changes. Also, if you leave some people out, you will have complaints. If you rely on supervisors or department heads to communicate the information given out in the meetings, you will have inconsistent results.

On the other hand, if you require everyone to be there, be prepared for about 25-40 percent of the people to be resistant.

I'd go with a quarterly meeting. Have food. Keep it as brief as possible. If its necessary to communicate monthly try e-mail or a "Letter from the CEO".

ritaanz

We hold our quarterly meetings during company time. We arrange for the second shift to come in 1/2 hour earlier ( they get to go home a 1/2 hour earlier) and hold the meeting at the end of the first shift. The meeting is planned in advance so it does not have a big impact on production or month end.

Our people have been very vocal about these meetings with compliments and suggestions. We considered stopping them, but got too much resistance.

It seems to work for us.

ray a

We have monthly All Hands Meetings. The VP, or CEO if he is in town, presides and he will talk about the business, profit/loss, new customers, etc.; along with ee recognitions. They usually last 30 minutes. Second shift comes in half an hour early and leaves half an hour early. Works out well. First shift hours aren't affected and second shift gets home earlier. It really does cut down on the complaint of lack of communication and second shift feels involved.