Town halls can feel repetitive at times. Slides get shared, the C-suite speaks and employees listen along. All pretty standard fare.
Russell Evans, head of communications for commercial banking at M&T Bank, believes that without the right agenda architecture, town halls can become routine events that do little to help employees understand the business or what’s expected of them.
At Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture Conference in Boston next month, Evans will walk through how he rebuilt town halls from the ground up by restructuring agendas around specific business objectives. The result was a clearer format that helped employees understand how their work connects to strategy and where the business is headed.
“Let’s pretend you don’t have a town hall,” Evans told Ragan. “Why would you create one? What business objectives would make it worthwhile for people to come together for an hour? That’s the starting point. If you can answer that clearly, then everything else, including the agenda, the speakers and the content, should be built to serve that purpose.”
Reconstructing the town hall agenda
One of the first changes Evans made centered on how financial performance data was shared. Instead of simply walking through financial statements in a slideshow, Evans worked with leadership to create a short list of business indicators that showed the health of the bank. Each one was shared with clear context tied to business priorities, and leaders explained performance through a red, yellow and green color system to provide a visual sense of where things stood. That shift gave employees a clearer way to understand performance without needing deep financial expertise.
“Each indicator had a clear purpose, and leaders could explain why it mattered and how we were tracking against it,” Evans said. “The scoring made it easy to understand at a glance. That made the conversation much more accessible for employees across the organization.”
Over time, this shift at town halls helped employees better understand the connection between business results and day-to-day work.
Creating a meeting that shows strategy in action
With a solid foundation in place, Evans then shifted his focus to ensuring that each town hall brought strategy to life for employees. That meant tying high-level business priorities into real examples of work happening across M&T Bank.
In a new segment called “Plans in Action,” Evans engineered town hall agendas to highlight one product or program and walked through how it connects to broader goals during the meeting. He also included a guided conversation with the person responsible for the initiative , walking through the story step-by-step.
“I’ll sit down with whoever is leading the work and interview them rather than having them present it,” Evans told Ragan. “That gives me the ability to guide the conversation in a way that builds understanding as we go. We can connect the work back to the strategy and make sure it’s clear why it matters. It turns it into something employees can actually follow.”
Each “Plans in Action” segment has a reusable formula that answers four questions:
- What is the initiative?
- Why is the business investing in it?
- What problem does it solve?
- How does it support strategic priorities?
“By structuring the segment as a conversation, we can build the story from the ground up instead of jumping straight into details,” Evans said. “It keeps the focus on what employees need to understand at each step. That makes it much easier for people to see how the work connects to the bigger picture and creates a more engaging experience overall.”
Reinforcing priorities through the agenda
As agendas became more focused, Evans built a way to track whether employees were absorbing the messaging. By including a set of repeat questions at the conclusion of each town hall, he was able to track shifts in employee understanding over time.
“This gives you a clear signal on whether people understand where you’re going and believe in it,” Evans said. “That’s what really tells you if the communication is working.”
One example came during the fourth quarter, when Evans organized a standalone town hall focused entirely on priorities for the months ahead. At the end of the meeting, leaders gave their teams clear directives and an easy-to-understand explanation of how their work contributed to the company’s goals.
“We focused that meeting entirely on what needed to be achieved in the fourth quarter and held it before the quarter started,” Evans told Ragan. “That gave teams clarity going in instead of reacting midway through. It also helped leaders sharpen their own priorities. In that case, the structure of the meeting helped drive alignment across the business.”
At its core, Evans’ approach focuses on using the agenda to help employees understand what matters and what to do with it.
“A lot of this comes down to being intentional about how you use the time you have with employees,” Evans said. “You’re bringing people together for a reason, and that time should be focused on what actually helps them understand the business and their role in it. When you do that well, the meeting becomes something people can actually use.”
To register for our Employee Communications and Culture Conference, click here.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
