In theory. In practice people schedule vacation that week simply to avoid it. Some company roles literally can't be abandoned for health and safety reasons or business practice reasons so they get to skip. Many people will schedule 3rd party conflicts to avoid a meeting (well I could have met with the local power company rep/engineer any time this quarter to discuss a facility upgrade but it just happens that supposedly his only open time is during the "all hands", oh how convenient for me.) People will also schedule training and conferences to avoid it. Well I don't use PHP but there's a PHP meetup during the quarterly all hands so ... I know service techs who pad overtime jobs till 2am the night before just so that driving across the state for an all hands would be a felony violation of CDL/OSHA max time behind the wheel regulations, and do it every single time.
Wow. I really had no idea of the potential range of dodges! Should I find myself again at a company that engages in this practice, I'll put your advice to good use. Thank you very kindly for sharing it here!
From the order "all hands on deck", perhaps so that the captain can address the entire crew from the sterncastle.
In my experience, this is the sort of meeting that completely wastes a shocking amount of everyone's time, and the Flavor-ade that HR always distributes there tastes very strange.
In my opinion, a company-wide mandatory meeting should be held no more often than owner/shareholder meetings, and only for time-sensitive issues that affect the entire company, such that you want everyone to hear that news, spun correctly from your good ol' trustworthy and reliable CEO, instead of getting rumors with varying levels of substantiation from the Internet.
If you want to give out awards and reinforce corporate culture, make that a voluntary meeting, and bribe people to come to it with gratis food and drink, or door prizes, or some form of entertainment.