HR presentations are sort of a big deal. They are intended to impact knowledge, engage employees, and present information needed for departments to function and do their best work. However, all of these goals can only be achieved when you deliver an impressive and engaging presentation.
Let’s face it. Most Business presentations are boring already. Most people just throw around facts and figures about business policies, employee performance, and various workplace metrics all of which can easily bore out any audience. Dull HR presentations don’t do anyone any good. This is why you have to put in the effort to make your HR presentations more enjoyable. Here are some simple ways you can do this for a more interesting yet impactful presentation.
Create great presentation designs
One of the biggest mistakes you can make while preparing for a presentation is to slap a PowerPoint presentation together at the last minute. You are most likely going to end up with a bad presentation with too many texts, bad typography, annoying animations, and more slides than you actually need. A vital key to impressive HR presentations is to create outstanding presentation designs. An effective presentation will incorporate images, videos, and other interactive content into an organized layout. You may need to incorporate flow charts, graphs, pie charts, and other business visuals. But try to keep them to a minimum and figure out a way to make them engaging so you don’t lose your audience.
Avoid reading from slides
Preparing great slides is only one-half of the work. The other half, which is equally essential is how you present it. One of the biggest mistakes you can make during an HR presentation is to simply read through every slide. Your slides are only meant to support your points. This is why you should avoid the error of including too much information on them. Not only does this make it wordy, but you will also be tempted to read directly from the screen. Reading from your slides will make it difficult (more like impossible) to maintain eye contact, gesticulate correctly and make use of space properly as you talk. All of these are ingredients for an engaging presentation.
Know your audience
One of the ways to ensure that your presentation is impactful, yet interesting is to try to see it through the eyes of the people that will be on the other end of the table. Knowing who the presentation is for will help you tailor its content to their interests, goals, and preference. Ask yourself who the people who will be at the meeting are, what do they care about and what do they know already. This way you can figure out how to tell them what they need to know without losing their interest. It helps when you can anticipate their questions and answer them before they even ask.
Infuse humor into your presentation
HR presentations typically include a lot of facts and figures. But most people quickly get bored by this especially when they can’t see how this applies in the real world. One simple way to keep people interested in all that “boring” stuff is to bring the points as close to home as possible. You can do this with interesting stories, examples, and anecdotes. You want to add a bit of office humor to your presentations. Of course, they have to be relevant to the presentation and professional. Infusing some snark into your presentation will ensure that you don’t drown out your audience with all the numbers and stats on the screen.
Decide what to share
One of the things you need to figure out is how much information you want to share and what should be left out of your presentation. Keep in mind that this is not a lecture so there’s no need to pass along all the information that you have to your audience (you’ll probably not have enough time for all of that anyways). This is why your goal should always be to deliver useful information only. You can do this by using short snippets and limiting your points only to the relevant ones. If you are having trouble with being concise, a simple trick is to remove the obvious details. Most times, you are speaking to people that have some basic background information about some of the data contained in your presentation. Cut some of this “known” information and focus on fresh information that matters. This will help keep your deck short and interesting.
Conclusion
As an HR leader, you need to communicate like a leader in every presentation that you deliver. This is important to ensure that the goals of your presentations are met and the session is as impactful as possible. If you are serious about advancing your HR career then you should start taking presentations more seriously by polishing up your skills. Your personal impact and career reputation rest on this.
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