By Corona larger gatherings of people are still prohibited. But especially in uncertain times, the staff wants to be informed about the latest developments in a meeting. Livestream is the solution that has established itself in all areas since summer 2020 at the latest. A livestream is versatile and can be individually designed. Especially at staff meetings, it unfolds its full communication power. This is also reflected by our customers, such as the Stadtsparkasse München and the Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs. Their staff meeting took place online as a livestream with Stream1 as a partner.
Higher viewer numbers for livestream
In contrast to on-site staff meetings, our clients report more participants and higher viewer numbers at the livestream than at on-site meetings. Messages and topics are communicated and understood better and, above all, more directly. This is well received by the audience despite the distance.
Observe different requirements for the livestream
Because of Corona, the home office has increased greatly. For the livestream, we distinguish between different “constellations” that we have to take into account:
- All employees in the home office with “private terminals” or “open terminals”.
- Employees in the home office connected via VPN
- All staff on site, e.g. in one or more buildings.
- 50 / 50
Both at Stadtsparkasse München and at the Bavarian State Ministry for Family Affairs, Labour and Social Affairs, we relied on the 50/50 solution, which we will discuss in more detail below. If you want to know more about the other options, read our article: “Successful staff meeting in livestream”.
50 / 50 staff on site, in the home office or from different locations
For both clients, we provided two variants for accessing the livestream. A selection button on one of the event’s websites allows the livestream to be transmitted via “Internal” or “External”. This means that not only viewers in the building, but also outside the building can participate in the event – with consideration for the Internal IT infrastructure.
“Internal” means that we use a proxy server solution, “External” means that we broadcast via our external livestream servers.
Internal use of proxy servers for live streams
In our case, a proxy server installed as hardware / device in a network has the task of distributing content from “External” to “Internal”.
In the concrete application Livestream for the City Savings Bank and the Ministry, the proxy server took over the following function: The server pulled only 1x the stream from the external server and makes this stream available for the employees in the internal network.
This has the advantage that the internet connection in the Stadtsparkasse and the ministry is spared and only 3 Mbit/s of download traffic was needed.
In addition, we clarified with our two customers in advance that, as we recommended, a fast network connection with e.g. 4 Gbit was available in the internal network for our proxy server.
The proxy server was thus the simplest and fastest solution so that the staff could follow the staff meeting live on site in the buildings. And all this without any “big” technical effort.
External use of a livestream server
We had the following solution for all external viewers of the staff meeting:
We broadcast the live stream via the servers of our partner www.livestream-server.de. In doing so, we fulfilled the guidelines for a DSGVO-compliant stream. This is because we host the servers ourselves and rely entirely on our German server location in Nuremberg.
Many possibilities with a staff meeting as a livestream
The following can be concluded from these two examples: With good planning and thoughtful broadcasting, employees can be reached just as reliably as with an on-site staff meeting. If not better.
In addition to the technical requirements, the planning and considerations in advance also include the following questions, which we would be happy to clarify with you:
- How do you reach all employees in terms of content during the meeting?
- What exactly is to be addressed or shown?
- Are there people who will give a presentation and thus be connected from the home office, for example?
- Do pre-produced films underline a topic and thus make it more understandable?
- Are different stages/locations/lectures/discussion rounds used to create variety in the livestream and thus generate more attention?
- Do belly bands and graphics make the stream more attractive?
- Should viewers be able to actively participate in the stream by asking questions using a chat tool?
- Do polls help, if necessary, so that staff can give their opinion on a particular topic?
- How about a general / open chat for all participants?
- Would you like a voting tool in the livestream to be able to vote anonymously and yet securely?
As you can see, the possibilities for participation and increasing the attractiveness of the livestream at staff meetings are very high. This is reflected above all in the higher number of viewers compared to on-site events. For example, the Stadtsparkasse München and the Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs were very satisfied with the livestreams of staff meetings.
We are convinced that staff meetings as livestreams will continue to be a big topic after Corona and also after 2021. Because they are a convincing solution for good communication with all employees.
We would be happy to advise you on this topic. Call us on 089 41 41 453 10 and we will be happy to offer a livestream meeting to meet your requirements. And: So far we have found a good solution for all our customers!
