Happy employees, booming business, and lasting client relationships all indicate a strong and positive company culture. Just as the stars align, these indicate long-term success. But are smooth day-to-day operations enough to secure all three?
Sometimes, it takes stepping out of the ordinary and routine to enhance these key relationships and ensure long-term growth. This is where corporate events come in. From annual town halls to holiday parties, investor meetings, anniversary/awards celebrations, and team building events, corporate events can do wonders in fostering a positive company culture and creating lasting business relationships with stakeholders.
Corporate Events 101
Whether you want to make employees feel valued for their hard work and contributions, or you’re looking forward to securing deals with top investors, corporate events require proper and strategic planning to achieve networking, revenue generation, and team building objectives.
An impactful corporate event starts with the basics, including setting the event criteria. This means deciding on the purpose of the event and the theme, as well as making logistical arrangements.
Things such as venue rental and setup, food and drink, program and entertainment, and post-event follow-up to activate new connections and collaborative opportunities all need to be planned. These arrangements are informed by a set budget and project ROI, whether in the form of sales or new deals.
The New Age of Corporate Events
The above recap is just the template for planning any event. But when you’re out to attract new investors or want to renew partnerships for the next few years, boost employee morale and productivity, or debut a revolutionary line of products and services, you’ll need more than a standard corporate event in to forge lasting professional connections.
So how can you take corporate events to the next level? Here are some fun, out-of-the-box ideas that create a lasting impression at your next breakfast briefing or awards ceremony:
1. Business Festival
Similar to well-loved music festivals that music lovers travel to from around the world, a business festival is centered on a particular topic. This can be like your latest launch, a social cause that your corporate values support, or even simply your company culture.
You can have different booths that feature these aspects of the business, providing clients and partners a full picture of the enterprise and new areas for investment. As well, giving employees from different departments the opportunity to interact and inspire collaboration in future activities.
2. Kidult for a Day
Corporate events don’t have to be so formal and uptight all the time. In fact, a relaxed and casual atmosphere can do wonders in promoting positive company culture. A ‘kidult day’ filled with callbacks to everyone’s childhood like ice cream trucks, bouncy castles, trampolines, face painting stations, and other kiddie attractions bring about a sense of nostalgia.
This allows employees to bond, network, and establish working relationships in a relaxed, stress-free environment. Show them that they’re valued — and reward their hard work with a day dedicated to fun.
You can even cap off the day with an outdoor cinema for folks who just want to relax, mix and mingle, and even invite their families for the complete work-life balance experience.
3. Scavenger Hunt
A classic team building activity, dividing employees into groups — and mixing them up from different departments — is guaranteed to promote cooperation and forge new friendships and connections.
Expect increased productivity and better overall workflow as employees discover each other’s strengths and learn to play to that even long after in work projects that require inter-departmental collaboration.
4. Take Visitors on a Journey
There’s no better way to create lasting relationships with clients and partners than taking them on the customer journey, complete with a tour of the facilities and engaging them in trivia about day-to-day operations and upcoming product launches.
You can set up each room or floor to offer a different experience, complete with on-theme speaking engagements, interactive displays, and food and drinks.
This is also a new take on conferences, which can be semi-structured at most, allowing participants and guess to take part in the discussion and learn more about products and services that they can avail of in their own ventures. Nothing makes sales pitches more effective than an immersive experience.
5. Business Masterclass
Aside from networking and sales, corporate events are also avenues for training and ongoing learning, whether for product knowledge or skills building.
You can either choose to host a conference-style workshop with industry experts, or an internal seminar for strengthening sales pitches. You could also be interfacing with new technology or simply even conducting a soft launch of a new product line before making it available to the public.
These workshops not only boost future productivity but also promote a positive culture that’s growth-oriented and forward-looking as employees are introduced to modern ways of doing business.
You can even turn this corporate event into a relaxed, casual experience that makes the masterclass feel like less of a chore and more of a value-adding activity. Round up the day spent learning with a pub-style trivia quiz for entertainment value and improved teamwork.
For more interesting ideas for corporate events, call Château Le Jardin at 1-888-529-8573, or contact us here.
