Internal emails vs town halls - which actually moved the needle at your company?

I got into it with our comms director last week over something that's bugged me for years. We rolled out a big restructuring plan back in March of 2022, and the CEO insisted on a single all-hands meeting to explain it. I argued we needed a series of smaller emails over two weeks instead, breaking down the changes step by step. Three years later, I still hear from people in the warehouse who sat through that town hall and left confused about their own job roles. Meanwhile, a buddy of mine at a logistics firm in Cleveland swears by short weekly email blasts from the CEO, says their productivity actually went up after they dropped the big meetings. So which format actually gets information to stick in your experience - the live event or the written update? Has anyone else dealt with a rollout that bombed because of the format?

2 comments

2 Comments

aaronf401d ago

Yeah, that warehouse confusion hit home for me. I've seen the same thing happen more than once. The big town hall is great for hype and big picture stuff, but it's terrible for details that people need to actually use in their day jobs. People zone out after the first ten minutes, or they get stuck on one thing and miss everything after it. Short, clear emails they can read on their own time and go back to later have worked way better for me. We did a weekly email blast for a shift schedule change and had way less pushback than any all hands meeting ever got. Have you tried a hybrid approach where you use a short town hall for the "why" and then follow up emails for the "how"?

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davis.diana1d ago

lmao aaron brought up the hybrid approach and i wonder if anyone's actually tested that with numbers. like did you run a survey after the town hall vs after the follow up emails to see which one people actually remembered? cause my old company did this thing where they'd do the big hype meeting then send a "recap" email that was basically the same info but in bullet points and people still said they preferred reading it on their own time. did your hybrid thing actually get better retention or was it just more work for the comms team?

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