TOWN HALL Q&A MODERATOR’S CHECKLIST
Get Tough Town Hall Questions Answered, Not Avoided
Know which questions to prioritize, when to press leaders for a clearer answer, and how to close the loop on questions left unanswered.
What's Inside
Advance question collection and sorting checklist
Rules for anonymous and sensitive questions
Question prioritization and executive routing criteria
Prompts to challenge vague answers
Unanswered-question log template
Post-town hall follow-up and recap checklist
Frequently Asked Questions
A town hall Q&A moderator selects employee questions, directs them to the right executives, asks follow-up questions when answers are unclear, and tracks unresolved issues. The role includes preparing the question queue before the meeting and ensuring unanswered questions receive follow-up afterward.
Collect employee questions before the meeting, group similar concerns, and assign topics to the appropriate executives. Use a CEO town hall question bank to identify important topics employees may have missed, without replacing their actual questions with prepared ones.
Balance popular questions with important employee concerns about strategy, staffing, workload, and organizational changes. Combine duplicates without changing their meaning, and don't let easy or preselected questions crowd out difficult topics.
Apply the same moderation rules to anonymous and named questions. Keep legitimate concerns in the discussion, remove abusive content or identifying details, and route individual HR matters through a confidential channel. Explain the anonymity settings before employees submit questions.
Ask a specific follow-up: What has been decided? What remains undecided? Who owns the next step? When will employees hear more? The checklist includes prompts moderators can use to get clearer answers without changing the employee's original question.
Record each unresolved question with an answer owner, follow-up owner, and next-update date. Publish outstanding question themes and commitments in the meeting recap, protect confidential details, and revisit open items at the next all-hands. The checklist includes a question log template for tracking these commitments.