PULTEVENT
All-hands meeting icebreakers: 6 five-minute openers the whole company plays from phones
Monday, 9:02, the canteen of an office in Manchester. A hundred and eighty chairs, maybe a hundred and ten of them filled, the rest of the company watching on a video call from Leeds, Lisbon and a lot of kitchen tables. The CFO has a deck with forty-one slides. Somebody is still queuing for the coffee machine. On the screen behind the lectern, a question: "How many cups of tea did this office drink last quarter?" Four options. Phones come out. The number is absurd, and the room laughs before the first slide.
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An all-hands has a hard job. You are asking people to give up an hour of real work to hear news that could, frankly, have been an email. The first five minutes decide whether they listen or quietly answer work chat under the table. A good icebreaker is not there to be fun for its own sake. It is there to get every head up and every thumb on a phone, so that by the time the roadmap appears they are already paying attention.
In PULTEVENT the facilitator runs the meeting screen from a laptop browser. Staff scan a QR code and answer on their own phones, with no app to install. People joining remotely see the shared stage window in the video call and use the same QR code. The one requirement: phones need internet.
6 all-hands openers, each under ten minutes
1 The absurd company number
One multiple-choice question about a real, slightly ridiculous internal figure: tea bags, printer jams, messages in the random channel. Results appear as bars before you reveal the answer.
How to run it. Ask facilities or IT for the number the week before. Make the wrong options plausible.
It gets a hundred phones out of pockets for a good reason, which makes the next poll much easier.
2 True or false: the quarter
Five statements about what the company did this quarter, some true, some invented. Staff tap true or false; the screen shows how the company split.
How to run it. Mix one big win, one small detail most people missed, and three convincing fakes.
It quietly tells you which news actually reached the floor and which got lost in a newsletter.
3 Guess the new starter
Every new joiner sends a fact and a childhood photo. The screen shows the photo and the fact; the company guesses who it is before the reveal.
How to run it. Only use people who agreed. Some would rather introduce themselves with a single wave, and that is fine.
It puts faces to the names in the org chart that nobody has met in person yet.
4 The one-word mood check
A live vote with five options about how the month felt, from 'on fire' to 'please send snacks'. Anonymous, instant, on the big screen.
How to run it. Read the result out loud and react to it honestly. Do not spin a bad result.
Leadership sees the mood without a survey, and staff see that someone looked.
5 The year on a timeline
Six company events on cards: the office move, the big client, the product launch, the server outage. Staff put them in order from their phones.
How to run it. Include one event from each department, so everyone has a chance at one card.
It turns a year-in-review slide into something people argue about, which means they remember it.
6 Wheel for the Q&A
Instead of waiting for brave hands, the guest wheel picks a random name among the people who joined. That person asks the next question, or passes.
How to run it. Announce it at the start so people have time to think of a question. Always allow a pass.
Q&As at big meetings usually hear from the same four people. The wheel spreads the microphone.
Five minutes, not fifty
Each opener fits between walking in and the first agenda item. Nobody loses a morning.
Office and remote together
Share the stage window in your video call and remote staff answer from their phones like everyone else.
Anonymous when it matters
Polls do not show names, so people answer honestly about the reorg.
Your slides live here too
Load your deck into the console and go straight from the icebreaker to the numbers.
Pick one opener, not three
The most common mistake I see is an all-hands that opens with twenty minutes of games and then rushes the actual content. People notice. The opener earns attention; it is not the event. For a sixty-minute meeting, one five-minute icebreaker at the top and maybe a poll halfway through is plenty.
Rotate them month to month. The absurd number in January, true or false in February, a new-starter round when hiring picks up.
When half the company is remote
Share the stage window, not your whole desktop, in the video call. Remote staff see the question and scan the QR code from their screen with their phones. Their answers count exactly like the answers from the canteen.
Read out one or two remote results by first name if the poll is not anonymous. It is a small gesture, and it tells the people at kitchen tables that they are in the meeting, not watching it.
Anonymous polls and awkward news
Some all-hands carry hard news: a reorg, a lost client, a hiring freeze. You can still open with a poll, but choose one that respects the mood. "What would you most like answered today?" with four topics is better than a joke about tea.
Polls in PULTEVENT show counts, not names. Say that out loud before people vote. Honest answers come only when people believe it.
From opener to slides without fumbling
The worst thirty seconds of any company meeting is the switch from one app to another while a room watches a desktop. Load the leadership deck into the console as slides and you go from the poll result to slide one in a single click. The break screen with a countdown is useful too, if the meeting has a ten-minute pause.
"Where did the deck go?"
"It's already up. Next slide."
Offices in more than one language
Guest screens follow each phone's language, so a colleague in Lisbon sees the buttons in Portuguese and a colleague in Leeds sees them in English. Your questions stay in whatever language you wrote them, so keep them in the company's working language and short enough to read in ten seconds.
Setting it up for next month
Take the free 3-day demo, no card required, and build next month's opener in an afternoon. Run it with your comms team on a meeting-room screen first. If it earns its place, the full version is a one-time licence with no subscription; pricing is listed on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run an icebreaker at your all-hands
- 1
A week before, pick one opener and collect the facts, numbers or photos it needs.
- 2
Build the question or poll in the console and load the leadership slides after it.
- 3
Test the office screen and the video call share with a colleague on a phone.
- 4
Put the QR code up as people arrive, with one line saying what it is for.
- 5
Run the opener, react to the result out loud, and move straight into the first slide.
- 6
Use the wheel or a second poll for the Q&A, then close with the next meeting date on screen.
FAQ
How long should an all-hands icebreaker take?
Do remote employees need anything special?
Are the polls anonymous?
Can we use our own slide deck?
Does IT need to install software?
Do the ready-made quizzes work for our company?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
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