Planning A Big Event For Your Employees? Here’s How To Do It Properly
Planning a big event for your employees is a significant endeavour. It takes time, money and manpower to pull off something spectacular. That’s why it pays to think about what you want from the process and how you’ll go about getting it. Here’s how to properly plan an event for your employees.
Choose A Theme
It’s important to gather your employees for a single purpose. Your event could focus on something simple, like celebrating the end of an annual business cycle. Or you could try to galvanize excitement behind a big change or new initiative in your company. Whatever it is, make sure that this core agenda item serves as the focal point for all other aspects of your employee event planning process.
Promote A Relaxed Environment
Your big event should be a time for your employees to get together and share ideas without pressure from their jobs or management.
Evening events work best as they tend to lead into a more relaxed setting once everyone is fed and happy. Decorations like balloons, banners, pictures of past events, etc are all great ways to promote company culture while not being overtly corporate about it. These are all small touches that go a long way when trying to establish a relaxed atmosphere at your next big event for employees.
Plan For the Event To Go Longer Than Anticipated
The worst thing you want is for your big event for employees to be cut short due to lack of participation or interest from other attendees. While promoting a relaxed environment where people don’t feel pressured by management is great in theory, it’s important to have contingency plans in place. If you’re planning on providing food and drink for your party, make sure you have a budget that will cover the costs of extra time if need be.
Hire A Stage Rental Company
It can be very easy to overlook the importance of audio visual services when planning an event, but there is no doubting that for some events these are essential. With this in mind it makes sense then to hire a stage rental company to help you organize your event because they will be able to take care of all the important technical elements and ensure that everything goes without a hitch on the day.
When renting an outside stage from professionals make sure you really do shop around as there are many companies out there who will charge more than necessary or those who offer a sub-par product. You should therefore view each option with an open mind, but also make sure that you stick to your guns if you know that there is a much better option on offer.
Advertise Your Event Online And In Person
Making sure your event has been properly advertised is important in making sure that everyone knows about it. Consider using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to get the word out via digital flyers or by posting on relevant hashtags.
You could also take things a step further by creating a dedicated website for your employee event so people can find the right information at the click of a button. If possible, look into getting physical fliers made up and going door-to-door to make sure that an invitation isn’t missed by anyone who might attend. Talk about it with your employees face-to-face, too: ask if they can get the word out to their networks in advance and engage them in a conversation about why you’re holding the event.
Consider An Encouragement Prize For The Most Fully Engaged Employee
While some people may choose to attend an employee event on their own accord, others will go only when encouraged and rewarded for doing so. That’s okay—there’s nothing wrong with needing a little push sometimes! It pays to set up a system where those who go above and beyond when asked to contribute time, effort or money to the cause are rewarded for their efforts with a raffle prize.
You could even create an in-house competition among departments where they get points that can be turned into rewards like gift cards and vouchers, but it doesn’t have to be something as formalized as that. Just make sure you give people a good reason to want to participate!
Cater To The Employees That Are Coming
If you’re asking your employees to put in extra time and energy on your behalf, it’s only fair that you support them back by ensuring that they will be properly cared for. Keep food options vegetarian-friendly and healthy—not everyone may eat meat regularly, so try not leaving anyone out by offering a range of options .
Consider getting food catered if you think that it’ll be easier for groups to share and mingle with one another. Always make sure that there are plenty of non-alcoholic drinks available if you want to encourage the kind of interactions between colleagues that lead to bonding and lasting memories—not drunken arguments!
Avoid These Common Mistakes
The following are some of the biggest mistakes businesses make when planning an event.
Too much direction by upper management. It is essential to include your employees in the planning process. By doing this, they will understand how much everything means to you and how important their participation is.
Avoid a lack of communication. Make sure that everyone who is involved with the event understands exactly what you want them to accomplish as well as their roles in making the event successful. However, when communicating with them, do not bombard them with emails that are too long or repetitive and boring – all it does is defeat the purpose of planning a special event for your employees.
Don’t use the same old activities – keep in mind that employees generally don’t want to do things they’ve done before. Therefore, try to include new and fun activities for them on this occasion.
Don’t schedule the event on a day when everyone is too busy – avoid making your employees choose between work and a reward function for their hard work, as no one will be happy about it. Instead, make sure you pick a day which is convenient for everyone involved so that there are no scheduling conflicts.
Planning a big event for your employees should be handled with care as it can really make or break their morale going into the next quarter of work. However, by promoting a relaxed environment where people can mingle and enjoy themselves while getting plenty of nourishment from good food and drink, everyone will leave happy and energized about what lies ahead for them at work.
