M&T Bank gives town hall questions 10 to 15 minutes

By James Calloway

M&T Bank dedicates 10 to 15 minutes of each hour-long town hall to employee questions, according to Russell Evans, head of communications for Commercial Banking at the bank.

Evans said M&T does not expect to answer every question in the room. Its goal is to give employees a meaningful chance to raise what is on their minds and help leaders understand what matters most.

He treats the questions employees bring to town halls as a useful test of what the meetings are for. Evans framed the issue this way:

“When you talk about employee questions, whether they’re unanswered or live, what you’re really talking about is whether you see town halls as mostly one-way communication or two-way communication,” Evans said.

“Many organizations would see them as one-way. They wouldn’t necessarily say that, but they approach them as the organization telling you what you need to know.”

His approach has three parts: ranking questions, allowing employees to help one another and carrying unresolved concerns into future meetings.

How does M&T decide which questions leaders should answer?

Evans said many organizations treat question-and-answer sessions as a nice-to-have that they address if time allows. At M&T, Q&A has a dedicated place on the agenda.

The bank’s technology lets employees upvote questions they want leaders to address. Evans said that voting gives M&T a way to focus limited time on the issues with the strongest employee interest.

“If you’re not able to get to every question, you can leverage technology to help you address the most important ones, because you gave employees the opportunity to upvote the questions they care about most,” Evans said.

“You’re also devoting a committed amount of time, and it’s a substantial amount of time. For us, it’s 10 to 15 minutes of an hour-long meeting.”

“That gives us a better opportunity to focus the conversation on what employees want to hear about.”

Under Evans’s method, employee voting helps determine which questions deserve leaders’ time.

How can employees answer one another’s questions?

M&T’s Q&A tool also lets employees respond to one another. Evans said this peer-answer function works well for operational questions that do not require a leader’s direct involvement.

Evans gave examples such as “Where do I submit that request?” and “What is my last day to fill out the engagement survey?”

“This platform also allows employees to answer each other’s questions,” Evans said. “Sometimes the question will be more of an operational question, like, ‘Where do I submit that request?’ or ‘What is my last day to fill out the engagement survey?’”

“When employees answer each other’s questions, that truly feels like magic. You get that crowdsourcing of information inside the meeting, but it can also happen after the meeting ends.”

Under Evans’s model, the meeting can produce answers even when leaders do not have every answer.

What happens to questions left after a town hall?

Evans said M&T’s best guide for deciding what to cover next comes from a post-event survey asking employees what they want to hear about. The process starts by reviewing every submitted question rather than only those left unanswered.

Evans described a two-step process:

• Pull every submitted question into one list and identify recurring topics.
• Carry those topics into planning for the next town hall.

“We’ve absolutely received content ideas from the kinds of questions that we get,” Evans said. “I wouldn’t say they come from the unanswered questions because it’s all the questions that are submitted, and you can see patterns. In some cases, it’s, ‘We need to tell employees more about this project.’”

“In other cases, it’s not that you haven’t covered a particular topic; it’s that the topic is employees’ top priority or pain point. Whether you’ve spoken about it or not, you should continue to focus on the things that matter most to your employee base.”

Under Evans’s process, old questions become planning data rather than loose ends.

When should a company rethink its town hall?

Evans said the reset should begin with leadership rather than another round of Q&A tactics. He recommends a “zero-based approach”: treat the meeting as if it does not exist and rebuild its purpose from first principles.

“Take a zero-based approach to your town hall,” he said. “Assume it doesn’t exist, then spend time brainstorming with leadership: Why should we have one? What should employees get from it? And how will we know if it’s working? Build from those answers instead of inheriting a format just because it’s what you’ve always done.”

Evans’s standard makes a town hall a test with stated goals, not a meeting on autopilot. Before the next meeting, leaders should be able to explain what employees gain and how they will know whether the format works.