corporate events
How do you hold a corporate event? Well, first of all you need to clearly identify exactly why you want to hold the corporate event and its aims and objectives. You also need to know your company and staff well in its current state and whether such an event is appropriate at this time – sounds obvious, but if the aim is to increase staff motivation and your company has just made a number of people redundant for example, splashing out on extravagant corporate entertainment will not go down well. Equally if you’ve had a really successful year, exceeded all targets and increased profits, a sparse mid-range hotel conference suite with a day full of dull strategy and finance presentations with mediocre catering would not be appreciated either.
You also need to decide if the corporate event is for the whole company or just a specific unit or team that needs particular motivation (and if this is the case – bear in mind how other staff members will feel if not invited!). Is this to be a memorable day’s experience or just a day out of the office?
Once the clear aim of the event has been established you next need to be clear about budget – as frankly, the sky’s the limit when it comes down to corporate entertainment – from relatively inexpensive sessions of teambuilding drumming/singing/paintballing etc to hiring luxury yacht’s or spending a day at the tracks racing Ferraris.
You should also decide whether you wish to hire one of the many companies who manage all aspects of corporate events from venue hire to catering to corporate entertainment or if you have someone in-house who is extremely well-organised, thrives on making ‘to-do’ lists and excels at paying attention to detail (if you don’t already have an events manager). Attention to detail is key here and the whole event will need to be mapped out in precise detail – everything from budget, location, catering and getting to and from the event. Also, don’t forget to let the staff attending actually know what they are turning up for! Keeping things a mystery, or being too vague just makes people nervous and if the aim here is staff motivation, you want the staff attending to mentally buy in to the event and ideally, actually look forward to it else you can do as much planning as possible and it could be a disaster. However, follow these general guidelines and it won’t!
