What to Do with Unanswered Questions After Your All-Hands Meeting

Time is one of the most valuable resources for any company. Yet it’s also the one thing that’s impossible to get more of. This rings…

Time is one of the most valuable resources for any company. Yet it’s also the one thing that’s impossible to get more of. This rings especially true for companies that hold all-hands meetings. These meetings are known for dragging on…especially when they aren’t backed by efficient planning and tools.

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to get everything you want in during an all-hands meeting. This means a lot of questions end up going unanswered. And the thing is, addressing these questions, no matter how big or small, is imperative to a healthy company culture.

Before we get started on what to do with your unanswered questions, let’s first talk about what an ‘all-hands’ meeting is.

What is an all-hands meeting?

An all-hands meeting is a meeting that brings an entire organization together. It is derived from the popular saying, “all hands-on deck”.

The meeting is used as a time to share important company wide information, whether that be updates, new strategies, celebrations or questions.

All-hands meetings are known to bring about a lot of questions and lead to a lot of discussion. As employees are given the time to speak and voice any concerns they may have, they might have a lot to say.

Or, they’ll have a LOT of questions.

Addressing Unanswered Questions from All-Hands Meetings

Questions from an all-hands meeting should never be ignored. When employee’s questions go unanswered, it’s possible they’ll feel their concerns aren’t valid or their voice doesn’t matter.

Here’s some good news: Addressing the unanswered questions from employees at your all-hands meeting is actually less complicated than you might think.

We’re here to give you our best tips for getting answers into the hands of those employees, and making sure that important issues don’t fall by the wayside!

Email follow ups

Email is one of the most common ways for employees and leaders to communicate. This makes it a great resource for sharing answers to questions.

You might summarize all of the answers to collected questions in a single document. Then, this can accompany the slides from the all-hands meeting. By having all of these materials in one email, employees won’t need to go searching for what they need. They’ll have easy access to answers to their burning questions.

Start a Slack conversation about your all-hands meetings

Keep the question and answers going with a Slack conversation! Not only can a program like Slack be great for consistent team communication, it can provide a great virtual space for answering questions.

Answering questions in writing with this method is made easy by having employees ‘upvote’ on which question they want answers to most. This way, questions are prioritized and answered most efficiently.

Use your intranet or create an internal blog post

Think about where your employees communicate most often. Use this as a tactic for deciding where to post answers.

For many companies, an intranet is an effective method for communicating companywide messages.

Post each question to your intranet and get the responses out to the employees who are looking for them. You might even include a dedicated page for all-hands meeting questions.

Similarly, an internal blog post can be a great way to share company information. Make it a habit to answer employee questions on a weekly or monthly basis and post them to your blog.

Again, it will be important to consider where your employees engage most. If employees happen to be active on reading company blog posts then this is certainly a great option!

Improve your all-hands meetings with FAQ’s

Sometimes leaders get stuck answering the same questions over and over again, especially when they are involved with bigger organizations.

The key is understanding these questions shouldn’t be mundane or frustrating to answer multiple times. Rather that they are important as more than one employee is looking for an answer to them.

The best solution to this is improving your presentation with a handy FAQ slide. Adding an FAQ to the end of your presentation is a great way to include visual responses, all in one place.

Without the need to go searching through multiple materials, employees can simply access the presentation slide deck and get all of the information they need.

Organize separate question sessions

It’s always important to answer employee questions with honesty, even when those questions might be uncomfortable. A great way to address these questions in an honest and genuine manner is through separate question sessions from your all-hands meeting.

This could be with an ‘ask me anything’ session or an open house to explore specific topics. Open houses are great for areas where lots of questions come in — get all of those answers in a single session.

Now, I want to hear from you, what do you do with unanswered questions after meetings?