Using Presentation Software to Engage with Your Employees

When it comes to team meetings they can often be deemed as dull, being talked at and one of those things you have to attend but you’d rather not. Most workplaces will have a structure in place where certain times of the month means updates, training, brainstorming but why should these meetings be anything less than fun and engaging? Yes, I said fun! Work doesn’t need to be boring and it definitely shouldn’t have your employees switching off, you will never get the most from them if they aren’t fully engaged. So, how can you go about making your meetings buzz? By switching to online presentations.

Online presentations can work for you in multiple ways:

1. Organise what you want to say and get it across in an interactive way
2. Provide visuals to support to your message
3. Keep your team focused
4. Animation, transitions, video and audio will help to keep their attention and make your message more interesting
5. It can be made accessible to your team after the meeting to remind them of the company’s goals

Our Tips:

Take your time to plan and organise your presentation. It may sound obvious but you need to start by thinking about what you need to say. Need is your go-to place. You may want to say an awful lot but this could spill over into far too many other areas and this is where waffling, information overload and employees losing the will to live begins!

What you need to say keeps you to the important bits. The parts that will benefit your business and move it forward. When you eliminate what doesn’t necessarily have to come up and plan what does need to come up you can make your meeting far more productive.

The order you present your information is also vital. A general guideline from us is:

1. Explain why you are there today
2. Say what you will be addressing
3. Explain what you want to cover
4. Tell them where you have been
5. Explain where you want the company to go
6. And how you will get there
7. Inform your team what is expected of them
8. Allow time for input/brainstorming
9. Conclusion
10. Thanking everyone for their time

Your slides need to have a clear, concise structure. Plan out on paper beforehand if need be and then get to work on applying this information to your slide deck.

Your take-home messages need to be further highlighted so use the tools that are available to you. Presbee offers the addition of clever transitions which allows your text to enter the screen with a jump, a bounce, a flash… however you want. It can also exit the screen in a clever fashion too.

Animation doesn’t have to be cheesy as long as you carefully choose where it appears and you don’t overdo it. It can be a great way to demonstrate how you want things to happen in your company, for dropping in a vital message and for breaking up text and your slides.

I would highly recommend adding a striking visual aid, such as a video, during a training session. This really helps to keep your employees switched on and will be a welcomed change to the usual dull structure they’ve been used to. To help you further, you can easily live stream video from YouTube with Presbee’s software and add audio to give the meeting a whole new feeling.

Once you have planned, created your first draft, you need to run through and check your work. I would be looking for several things:

1. Spelling and grammatical errors
2. That it flows
3. That your message isn’t lost within heavy text
4. Your slides are in the right order
5. It remains interesting

But, how do you ensure it remains interesting?

1. Include open questions- these are questions that will encourage your staff to interact with you and the rest of the team. No yes/no answers.
2. Include a brainstorming section to get their ideas and input.
3. Shake it up by including humour and some lightheartedness. It doesn’t have to all be serious.
4. Use props and visual aids to back up your message.
5. Don’t make your text heavy, keep it to the point and clear.
6. Don’t overdo bullet points, they are a sure way of boring your team.
7. Include demonstrations if possible.
8. Plan in regular breaks.
9. Apply data to eye-catching graphs and charts which are easy to read.
10. Be a showman! This may not come naturally to you but as long as you practise your speech and run through your slides you can build on your confidence to be able to give the best meeting you ever have.

What you want to achieve is a meeting that is informative yet positive, encouraging and inspiring. Your team need to feel motivated and valued if you are to get the best out of them and by creating an engaging online presentation you will be showing them that their input is also vital in the running of the business.