JOANNA SMITH: Hi.
I'm Joanna Smith, and today, we're
looking at how to keep your employees connected
and engaged--
even when they can't be in the office.
Co-workers and teams are able to stay connected
while working remotely thanks to tools
like collaborative documents, video meetings, and team chat
rooms.
On a larger scale, enabling employees
to feel connected across teams and to the company as a whole
can be a challenge.
One tactic that's especially effective
here is to host a virtual all-hands.
An all-hands meeting is unique in its ability
to bring an organization together
while ensuring that everyone receives the same information.
In fact, a recent study by igloo Software
found that 75% of remote workers believe they miss out
on important information.
This can cause operational issues,
and result in a disengaged workforce.
But the logistics of running an all-hands meeting remotely
may seem daunting.
Fortunately, you can use G Suite and Google
Meet the host a virtual all-hands for up to 100,000
employees, whether they're working
from their home, office, on the factory floor,
or out in the field.
Google Meet is our enterprise-grade video
conferencing solution that takes advantage of Google Cloud's
secure-by-design infrastructure, and features
a number of proactive counter-abuse protections
to help protect your data and safeguard your privacy.
With Google Meet, your video meetings
are secure, easy to join, and offer helpful features,
like adaptive layouts, so that you
can focus on what matters most.
Best of all, with G Suite, you get so much more than meetings.
You can schedule and join meetings
directly from Gmail or Google Calendar,
easily present your screen or collaborate on a document
during the meeting, and securely record a meeting
and have it saved to Google Drive to be shared later.
These same features that make Google
Meet so effective as a video conferencing solution
are what make it simple and straightforward to host
a virtual all-hands meeting.
So let's take a look at how that might come together.
First, we'll need to create the calendar
event for our all-hands.
We'll select the time, and then we can fill out
the initial information, including
the event title and any details we need in the description.
Then we need to add Google Meet video conferencing, which
is as simple as a click.
Our all-hands is also going to offer a livestream,
so to enable that, we'll want to switch to the Event Details
page.
The option to add a livestream is nested under the Google Meet
additional details view, and all it takes is a single click.
Now, we can invite our co-presenters and attendees,
and just like that, our virtual all-hands has been scheduled.
A single Google Meet video conference
supports up to 250 participants, while a livestream supports up
to 100,000 viewers.
Depending on the size and nature of your all-hands,
you may want to create two separate events--
one that contains the Google Video conference, to which you
only invite presenters, and then a second event
for the view-only livestream, where you can invite attendees.
Creating a view-only event is a simple edit
on the initial event.
From the event details dialog, click the three-dot menu
button, and select Create View Only Event.
You can then invite your attendees
and even modify the event description,
if there is separate information to share for the audience.
On the day of the event, we'll want
to be sure that everyone can join,
whether they're using shared video conferencing
devices, the Google Meet mobile app,
or watching the view-only livestream
from any modern browser.
As the event organizer, we'll want
to join early so that we can turn on each of these features.
The livestream doesn't begin automatically,
and needs to be started.
This allows organizers to get set up
and test their presentations without an accidental audience.
When everyone is ready, we'll click Start Streaming.
We'll know the livestream is active
based on the Live tag in the corner of the screen.
If we want to make this virtual all-hands
available after the event, we can
choose to record the meeting.
To begin recording, select the three dots in the bottom corner
to open a menu of additional options.
There, we can click Record Meeting,
and another red tag has appeared in the upper corner,
to indicate that this meeting is being recorded.
The recording will be emailed to the organizer
after the livestream ends and saved securely to Google Drive,
where can later be distributed for on-demand viewing.
To stop recording or streaming, simply
return to the Options menu.
Also, from this menu, we can turn on live captions
to make the meeting more inclusive.
Live captions and Google Meet are powered by Google's speech
recognition technology, not typed
by a human, which helps ensure no one
outside your organization is viewing private content.
During the all-hands, each presenter
can easily participate, even if they aren't in the same place.
When it's our turn to present, we're
given the option to share our entire screen,
a specific window, or even a single Chrome
tab, which makes it easy to play high-quality videos with audio.
And when we're done, we simply stop presenting.
With these options, Meet makes it
easy to have control of the content you'd like to share.
With distributed teams, it's especially important
to have a mechanism in place for giving feedback.
After the all-hands ends, we'll use Google Forms to quickly
create a simple survey.
We can customize the format, randomize the questions,
and designate certain questions as required,
so employees can share their thoughts
on the event and content.
Because of the deep integrations built into G Suite,
the survey responses automatically
populate into a Google Sheet where
we can view the raw responses, or use the Explore feature
to get suggestions on pivot tables or data visualizations.
The feedback form, along with the recording,
presented slides, and follow materials
can be shared across the company using an internal portal
created with Google Sites.
This internal site provides a quick and easy way
to keep everyone on the same page,
and serves as an on-demand reference for their content.
A site like this is especially helpful
when onboarding new employees, and it's easy to update,
so you can keep adding additional content
as it becomes available.
And that is how you can use G Suite and Google Meet
to host a virtual all-hands to keep your employees connected
and engaged, even when they can't be in the office.
If you aren't already on G Suite,
we have a new way to help you get started immediately.
With our new G Suite Essentials offering,
teams and organizations can start
collaborating using the tools you've
seen here in hours, not weeks.
G Suite Essentials includes Google Meet,
Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Sites.
It's compatible with your existing IT environment,
and there is no need to adopt a new email or calendar system.
From now through September 30, teams and organizations
can use G Suite Essentials at no cost,
including advanced functionality,
like shared Drives, meeting recordings,
and in-domain live streaming.
For existing G Suite customers, we're
also enabling access to advanced Meet functionality at no cost
through September 30.
This includes in-domain livestreaming
for up to 100,000 people, the ability
to record meetings to Drive, and larger meetings
for up to 250 people per call.
To learn more about G Suite, visit gsuite.google.com.