A 4 hour lecture/seminar (it's not going to be a real meeting, is it) is just not ever a useful thing. Even if the information conveyed is somehow important and somehow can't be supplied as a document, everybody will be snoozing by hour 2 - not to mention resentful from minute 1.
A barely related anecdote to illustrate why some people mistrust management. Not entirely necessary but having typed it I might as well press the button:
The only time I've ever been pulled into a 4-hour all-hands meeting it turned out to be a covert way to fire a bunch of employees without giving them the chance to say goodbye to their colleagues.
One by one, people got summoned out of the room ("hey, there's a phone call for you", etc) and never returned. The rest sat listening to the "leaders" (including one fairly well known public figure) droning on about nothing. By the end many of us had figured out what was happening, and when we all returned to the office to find ~30% of the desks empty there was universal outrage.
Lots of other people left in the aftermath, and the exodus apparently continued after I went.
A barely related anecdote to illustrate why some people mistrust management. Not entirely necessary but having typed it I might as well press the button:
The only time I've ever been pulled into a 4-hour all-hands meeting it turned out to be a covert way to fire a bunch of employees without giving them the chance to say goodbye to their colleagues.
One by one, people got summoned out of the room ("hey, there's a phone call for you", etc) and never returned. The rest sat listening to the "leaders" (including one fairly well known public figure) droning on about nothing. By the end many of us had figured out what was happening, and when we all returned to the office to find ~30% of the desks empty there was universal outrage.
Lots of other people left in the aftermath, and the exodus apparently continued after I went.