When we talk about corporate events, we’re using an umbrella term that includes company meetings and conferences, team-building events, incentive trips, training seminars, or celebratory events to reward staff for their good work. This means it’s important to go into planning your event with a clear objective, which will ultimately create meaning for your event while helping you focus on driving engagement for your employees.
Employee engagement is not only critical to a successful event, it’s arguably the most important element to a successful business. Before finalizing your corporate event strategy, consider implementing these ideas into your next event:
Choose Your Venue With Your Audience in Mind
While your objective should help you choose your event location, don’t forget to keep your audience at the forefront of your selection. While specific team-building activities may choose the venue for you depending on the selected bonding experience, not all events are created equally. You’ll want to keep in mind the space, activities, and food options, as well as the venue’s sustainability and accessibility factors. For a lot of employees, convenience is going to be key, whether that means close to the office, or, if it’s a corporate retreat, generally within North America (as trends indicate)—and ideally near a beach. Choosing a venue or location that’s unique, exciting, and convenient are quick ways to pique the interest of your employees.
Create a Theme
You know you’ve hosted a successful event when your attendees are talking about it long after the event has ended. Incorporating a theme into your corporate event gives it a sense of fun. Whether that’s incorporating a bingeable show’s lingo and motif into the event language and decor, to escape rooms or cruise themes that dictate your venue. This also works around objectives, so creating a theme around a slogan that unifies your team can make less glamorous events, like meetings, more exciting.
Deliver World-Class Content
You can ensure your attendees will be engaged when the content is clearly suited to their needs and interests. Between coaching up your internal presenters and looking for outside supplements in keynote speakers and industry experts, your speakers carry significant influence in the overarching experience. Consider featuring a speaker who can attract a crowd. A speaker can be someone who is relevant to your company and industry, or someone who is there purely for entertainment purposes. Whoever you choose, talented and relevant presents can make or break engagement. It’s important to remember that bringing in unique perspectives from different backgrounds and cultures can also be a driving force for your attendees to engage.
Get Interactive
Cooking, wine tasting, escape rooming, paintballing, volunteering—these are all team-building activities that are interactive and fun for everyone to do together. But interactive doesn’t just mean employee bonding experiences (although important), it also means getting immersive. With tech constantly upgrading to the next level, VR, AI, and AR are only getting wilder and more fun for event attendees (you can even take virtual reality trips with your colleagues). Beyond polling, quizzes, and live Q&As, there are a lot of possibilities when it comes to providing interactive and immersive experiences for corporate events.
Swag Bags
The swag bag is a tried and true friend when it comes to boosting excitement levels. These can come in the form of deliverables—perhaps you employees will be needing certain items for an in-person or virtual event. But they can also come in the form of incentive gifts (as in, I incentivize you to come to our event and bond with your colleagues). Either way, giving out company brand merch, or fun, usable items from vendors or partners is just good for business—because who doesn’t love a present?
Wondering what new trends are coming your way this year in the corporate event spectrum? Check out Corporate Event Trends for 2023. You also won’t want to miss out on this year’s Incentive Travel Trends.
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