Our group (customer) representatives often give presentations in very informal settings (e.g., breakrooms, plant floor) to employees regarding their health insurance benefits. They rarely have the facilities or equipment to use a PowerPoint presentation, flip charts or other visual aids. They present to groups as small as 2 or 3 people at a time and as large as 60 or 70. Meetings are often scheduled with very little advanced notice. I'm looking for recommendations for websites, books or other resources that will help them with presenting complex information in informal settings and unpredictable settings without visual aids other than simple handouts or product brochures. Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you.

Judy

Just to get a better perspective: do you have a different approach when it’s a small group (2-3) versus a large group (60+)?

DELIVERY: When presenting to a small group, do you use something like a flip chart easel binder? With a large group, do you use a wall or tabletop post-it flip chart (so if a table isn’t available, you can use a wall)? Or are the presentations the same regardless of size (verbal, handouts).

INFORMATION: What is the information? Are you selling health care options or explaining benefits? Is this a data dump or interactive session? How much time do you have for these presentations?

MATERIALS: What does your presentation package consist of?

PRESENTATION CHALLENGES: What are the issues you're experiencing? What does your audience say about the effectiveness of how you're doing it now?

Thanks! If you can give us more details, it would be easier to help you come up with a workable solution.

Great questions. Let's see if I can provide a bit more information.

DELIVERY: Presentations are done at the employer's site. Arrangements are often made at the last minute and the presenters are sometimes not even involved in coordinating the meetings. Our presenters have little or no control on the setting so they may end up in a room that's too big, to small, noisy, too hot, etc. Thre is little or no opportunity to have flip charts or other visual aids avialable.

INFORMATION: It is primarily employee health insurance benefits. It is often a data dump, but our presenters would like it to be more interactive. One of the challenges however, is that they sometimes get 20 minutes to presnet material that should probably take an hour or more. This can really vary though. Sometimes the benefits are straight forward or are not significantly different that what the employee provided previously. Sometimes, however, the benefits are new and more complex (e.g., health reimbursement accounts).

MATERIALS: Typcially a printed summary of benefits is provided. This is usually a 3 to 4 page document. While organized pretty well, it's fairly detailed.

PRESENTATION CHALLENGES: All of the above. The audience does not typically provide feedback. We do not ask the audience to complete evaluation forms, because the employers want the employees back to work as quickly as possible.

Any suggestions or resource recommendations you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Option.....change the game.

Handle the data dump by making the info available to participants to preview in advance (read ahead).

Then, when you are there in person you can handle Q/A.

I totally agree with silver spur. All of the information on benefits is something one can read ahead of time. Then you can cover highlights (enrollment dates, etc.) and answer questions when you meet.