In short
A good all-hands meeting agenda is short and fixed. Open with why the meeting exists, give two or three updates that need a room rather than an email, then spend at least a third of the time on questions, collected in advance and taken live. Publish written answers afterwards.
An all-hands meeting agenda works when it is short, predictable and mostly questions. Open with one sentence on why the meeting is happening, give two or three updates that need to be said to everyone at once, and spend at least a third of the time answering questions that were collected in advance. Afterwards, publish written answers, including to the questions you ran out of time for.
This guide gives the steps for preparing one, a copyable all-hands meeting agenda, how to run the Q&A so it is worth having, and what to do about recording a meeting the whole company attends.
How to prepare an all-hands meeting
- Decide what needs the room. List the updates you want to give and move every one that is only information into a written note sent before the meeting. What is left is news people will have questions about: a reorganisation, a change of direction, a hard quarter.
- Open the question box a week ahead. Use a form or a shared document that allows anonymous questions and lets people vote. Say in the invite that it is open.
- Write the invite. Include the date, the agenda, the link to the question box, and whether the meeting will be recorded and who will be able to watch the recording.
- Assign an owner to each item. Each update has one speaker and a time limit. The Q&A has a moderator who is not one of the speakers.
- Read the top questions two days before. Group duplicates, decide who answers each, and prepare facts for the hard ones. Do not reword a question into an easier one.
- Send the written pre-read the day before. Numbers, charts and routine announcements go here, so the meeting can refer to them rather than read them out.
- Run the meeting to time. Protect the Q&A block. If an update runs long, it comes out of the update, not the questions.
- Publish the follow-up within two days. A short write-up, answers to unanswered questions, and the recording if there is one.
The all-hands meeting agenda template
A 60-minute version. For 30 minutes, halve every slot and keep the proportions.
# All-hands — <date>
**Pre-read:** <link, sent the day before>
**Questions:** <link to the question box, open until the meeting starts>
**Recording:** <yes / no — and who can watch it>
| Time | Item | Who |
| ---- | ------------------------------------- | ----------- |
| 0:00 | Why we're meeting today (2 minutes) | <host> |
| 0:02 | Update 1: <topic that needs the room> | <speaker> |
| 0:12 | Update 2: <topic> | <speaker> |
| 0:22 | Update 3 or recognition | <speaker> |
| 0:30 | Questions: most-voted first | <moderator> |
| 0:55 | What happens next, where answers go | <host> |Keep the same format every time. People learn where the questions are and stop asking whether there will be time for them.
What goes in the updates
An update belongs in the meeting if it is something people will want to ask about, or something they should hear from a person rather than read. Good candidates:
- A decision and its reasoning. "We are closing the Lisbon office" in writing invites rumours; said in a room, with the reasons and the plan for the people affected, it invites questions you can answer.
- Where the company stands against what it said last time. Name the goals from the previous all-hands and say plainly which were met.
- Changes that affect everyone's work: a new tool, a policy change, a new team.
Bad candidates are anything that is a list of numbers without a decision attached, team-by-team status updates, and product demos nobody asked for. Put those in the pre-read, or in the kind of written status update that replaces a meeting.
Running the all-hands Q&A
The Q&A is the reason to hold an all-hands at all. A few habits make it work:
Collect questions in advance, and take them live too
Advance questions give quieter people and other time zones a way in, and give speakers time to find real answers. Live questions catch what the updates just raised. Take the most-voted advance questions first, then open the floor.
Allow anonymous questions
Many people will not put their name to "Are there going to be layoffs?" That is exactly the question the meeting should answer. Anonymous does not mean unmoderated: the moderator can drop abusive questions, but should not drop uncomfortable ones.
Read the question as asked
If the moderator softens a question before reading it out, people notice. Read it word for word, then answer.
Say "I don't know" when that is the answer
Follow it with when you will know and where the answer will be posted. Then post it.
Answer what you ran out of time for
Publish written answers to every remaining question in the follow-up. An unanswered question that disappears teaches people not to ask.
Recording the all-hands
Companies with people in several time zones often record the all-hands so everyone can watch it. That is reasonable, and it still needs to be said:
- Say it in the invite. "This meeting will be recorded and the recording shared with all staff for 30 days."
- Say it again at the start, and before the Q&A. Some people will phrase a question differently, or ask it in writing instead, if they know it is kept.
- Say who can watch it and for how long. A recording shared inside the company is different from one that might reach customers or the press.
- Follow your company's policy. Many have a meeting recording policy; in some places, data protection or workplace law also applies to recording staff.
How to ask for consent to record a meeting has wording for invites and for the start of a meeting.
The recording itself is usually made by whoever runs the meeting, with the meeting platform's own recorder, so that it can be shared. If you are an attendee who wants your own notes of a large company meeting, recording a webinar on a Mac covers listening in and the permission it needs.
Taking notes you can publish
The follow-up is only as good as the notes behind it. Assign a note-taker who is not speaking or moderating, and ask them to capture:
- Each question as it was asked, and a one-line summary of the answer.
- Commitments made from the stage: "We will publish the new travel policy by the end of the month."
- Questions promised a later answer, with who owes it.
A transcript helps with the first of these: the exact wording of a question and its answer is easy to lose while writing. If the note-taker records their own copy on a Mac with Notey, the meeting audio arrives on the "Them" track and their own voice on "You", and the transcript is made on the Mac as the meeting runs. That is only appropriate if the meeting was announced as recorded; a personal recording of a company meeting that people were told was not recorded is not. Notey can draft a summary and action items from the transcript text if the note-taker signs in and asks; the result is labelled as AI-generated, and it should be checked against the transcript before anything is published.
The follow-up
Send it within two days, while the meeting is still fresh:
# All-hands follow-up — <date>
**Recording:** <link, available until <date>>
## What we covered
- <update 1 in one or two sentences>
- <update 2>
## Commitments
- <what> — <who> — <by when>
## Questions we answered
- **Q:** <question as asked>
**A:** <answer, one or two sentences>
## Questions we did not reach
- **Q:** <question>
**A:** <written answer>Put it where people already look, and link to it from the next all-hands invite. When people see last month's commitments checked off in the next meeting, the format earns trust.
Common mistakes
- Updates that eat the Q&A. Fix the times and keep them.
- Questions reworded into easier ones. People stop asking.
- A recording nobody was told about. Say it in the invite and at the start.
- No written answers. The questions that were not reached are often the ones people cared about most.
- A different format every month. Predictability is what makes people prepare questions.
For how this meeting compares with the others a company runs, and what record each needs, see types of meetings and the notes each one needs.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an all-hands meeting be?
Most companies run them for 30 to 60 minutes. The length matters less than the split; if questions get less than a third of the time, the meeting is a broadcast that could have been a written update.
What should be on an all-hands agenda?
A short opening on why this meeting, two or three updates that benefit from being said to everyone at once, recognition if your company does it, and a fixed block for questions. Leave out anything that is only a list of numbers; send that in writing first.
How do you collect questions for an all-hands?
Open a form or a shared document a week before and allow anonymous questions. Let people vote on them, answer the most-voted first, and publish written answers to anything you did not reach.
Should an all-hands meeting be recorded?
Many companies record them for people in other time zones. Say so in the invite and at the start, and tell people before the Q&A, because some will ask a question differently if they know it is kept.
What is the difference between an all-hands and a town hall?
The words are often used for the same thing. Where companies distinguish them, a town hall usually gives more of its time to open questions, and an all-hands more to updates from leadership.