Internal conferences and meetings play a crucial role in a company’s ability to develop business strategy, implement new policies, discover industry trends, and connect employees in a way that facilitates discussion and promotes a shared vision. These company-wide meetings can prove tricky when you are talking about a company whose employee’s spans across several cities, states, or even countries. Often important messages are not relayed to all parties, employees start to feel isolated, unimportant, and unmotivated. Before you know it that cohesive, solid company culture and business strategy you worked so hard on begins to unravel. If you are a company with multiple locations and this struggle sounds all too familiar, you are in luck. With the virtual meeting technologies available today, it is easier than ever to bring people all across the globe together. Here are 5 ways virtual meetings can help unify your company:
1. Improves Communication
Poor communication is a struggle with almost every business. This issue is increased substantially when your company has a remote workforce or offices in multiple locations. Often times decisions makers find themselves having to reiterate the same ideas over and over again to their various workforces. By establishing a regular schedule of virtual meetings, decision makers can increase efficiency by sharing important information to all the necessary parties at once.
2. Fosters Stronger Relationships
Let’s face it, people are not motivated by company-wide memos. In fact, a recent study showed nearly 100% of people still believe face-to-face meetings are essential for long-term business relationships. If you want to keep your employees long-term, setting aside some face time is a priority. However, when your employees are spread across the globe, this can be difficult. That is where video conferencing technologies come in. For example, Zoom is an online video conferencing platform that allows for up to 50 HD video streams at the same time. In other words, you can create a virtual face-to-face meeting that will foster stronger relationships.
3. Ensures Message Continuity
If you have ever played the telephone game you know how easily a simple message can get misconstrued. Each time the message is passed to another person key details get left out or altered so that by the end the message is completely different than what you started with. While this is an entertaining children’s game, it is not so funny when the same effects are felt in a business setting. This is what makes all hands or company-wide meetings so important. Conducting these meetings virtually allows companies to ensure the message is delivered equally to all staff members in a cost-effective manner.
4. Encourages Meaningful Discussions and Increases Engagement
Company-wide meetings can sometimes seem intimidating to those lower on the organizational hierarchy. This intimidation could lead to less participation, collaboration, and idea sharing. Imagine having to stand up and share your opinion or idea to a crowd of 1,000 strangers. Virtual meeting technologies can take that intimidation away by allowing employees to share ideas in a way that is comfortable for them. With chat, hand-raising, polling, and other features attendees can share their opinions and ideas without feeling on the spot.
5. Decreases Unhealthy Competition or Resentment
When your company is comprised of multiple branches, unhealthy competition can begin to breed between one location and another. This “us vs. them” mentality can have a devastating effect on your company culture, employee turnover, and overall bottom line. One way to rectify this common problem, is to set up regular virtual meetings between the various branches. Each team can collaborate with each other to solve common problems, share goals and achievements, and offer tips and advice. By identifying common issues and goals and tackling them together the “us vs. them” mentality weakens employee morale and company unity improves.
If your company is struggling with unification across multiple locations, be assured that you are not alone. Worktank has worked alongside hundreds of companies just like yours. By implementing the right virtual meeting management strategies, we have helped companies improve their company-wide communication and strengthen the overall company culture. Ready to start the process? Contact us at 1.877.975.8265 or fill out or online form.
