Our top 3 things to consider if you want a successful corporate event
Corporate events – whether team building, business or entertainment focused – are complex beasts. For a start you have a number of ‘customers’ to satisfy. For another, budget is always under the microscope yet everyone wants to be blown away by a fantastic experience.
For the in-house team charged with creating this magic, events might not even be part of their day job.
However, we’re seeing clear evidence that people spending time together outside of the office is critical to relationship and team building, not to mention boosting mental health after a highly challenging – and lonely – couple of years. So, rather than sit and fret over your brief, read our top 3 things to consider if you want a successful corporate event.
1. Organisation and planning
From the get-go it is critical to have an overview of what you want to achieve and how the event needs to look. How much time do you have? Is there a preferred travel time/location? Do you need indoor or outdoor space – or both? Are you including an overnight stay, dinner, entertainment?
So many questions but nailing the brief completely at an early stage will save you time in the long run. There’s nothing worse than spending ages putting together the perfect itinerary and booking all the component parts only to have to wedge in an additional element somewhere.
Our recommendation? Conduct a ‘walk-through’ of the event in your mind once you have an outline programme. What are delegates going to need? What will make this even better for them? What support do you need at each stage to make things go smoothly?
2. The right support
When it comes to team building and event planning, you need to know you’ve got your own team behind you. There are so many moving parts to planning an event that the more you can delegate responsibility, the greater your chances of success. You might not have the in-house resource but all is not lost.
Look to your choice of venue. They have in-house event teams (to varying degrees – something to check on early if this is critical to your success) and will know the art of the possible in terms of their facilities and surroundings. Seek to extend your team with experts: event planning companies like Team Activities Group who have done this thousands of times and we know the pitfalls. We can run one part of your experience, or we can oversee and manage the whole thing.
Decide on your approach at the earliest stage possible and then you’ll get maximum value from those you engage with.
3. Horses for courses
Although you might not select a day at the races, you do need to match your event and activities with a suitable venue. Having the knowledge of which venue will give you the best guarantee of success might be a risk factor for you – again, we recommend you speak to the experts.
We partner with our venues, meaning we are continually in touch with them and know exactly which facilities will be best for you. We can join the dots on this because we can liaise not only with you and the venue but we also know which of our activities and entertainment acts work best at the venue. In short, we can coordinate the whole event and take the weight fully off your shoulders.
Hopefully this blog has some useful pointers to stop you getting overwhelmed at the thought of planning a large corporate event. Our website is packed with examples of the type of activities we can provide for you and we also have a page for every venue partner. This is a great resource for you to browse through and discover the extent of amazing grounds, conference rooms of all shapes and sizes, quaint meeting rooms, historic buildings and fantastic opportunities for indoor, outdoor and water-based events available to you.
If you’d like to chat more, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us on 07767 250192 or email events@tag-events.com