11 Tips to Planning Your Next Corporate Event

As we transition into a post-COVID world, company and corporate event restrictions are starting to lift. Businesses have put off hosting parties and events for quite a while, but now it’s time to bring everyone together and celebrate.

Are you getting ready to plan a corporate gathering? If so, the tips listed below can help with every step of the process.

1. Consult Your Guests
If it’s been a long time since you’ve planned a corporate event, don’t make assumptions about what your guests want. Send out some surveys or hold a team meeting (if it’s going to be a relatively small event). Find out what kind of gathering everyone wants to have before you get too far into the planning process.

2. Gather a Committee
You don’t have to plan your next event all by yourself. Recruit some of your colleagues to join you and help you put it together. Be sure to delegate responsibilities and make sure the work is evenly distributed across the entire committee, too, so that everyone is pulling their weight.

3. Choose Your Event Type
After you’ve gathered your committee and sought out some feedback from your employees or other attendees, decide what kind of event you want to have. Do you want to have a micro event with a few intimate training sessions and a group dinner? Do you want to host a large-scale, multi-day conference? The event type you decide on will guide a lot of your future decisions, so it’s important to choose carefully.

4. Give It a Theme
Next, pick a theme for the event. It could be a word, a phrase, or part of your company’s mission statement. This is where having a committee comes in handy. It’s much easier to pick a theme when you’re able to bounce ideas off of others.

5. Set a Budget
Now, it’s time to decide how much you can afford to spend on your event. Make sure you factor in all potential expenses, including the cost of the venue, the cost of food and drinks, accommodation and travel for attendees, speaker fees, and marketing expenses. If you’ve hosted this kind of event in the past, you can use the previous budget as a reference point. Build some flexibility in, though, so you don’t end up overspending in case you’re met with unexpected costs.

6. Set a Goal
Consult our team to decide your primary objective for this event. Do you want to get everyone together to decompress after spending so much time apart? Do you want to provide dedicated training to get everyone on the same page with a new program?

7. Create a Timeline
It takes time to plan a corporate event, even a small one. Create a detailed timeline so that you have clear due dates and deadlines for each part of the planning process. This helps you break down the big task into more manageable chunks, which keeps you and your team motivated and helps you monitor progress along the way.

8. Choose a Venue
Your next job is to decide where the event will take place. Do you want to host it at the office to save money? Are you willing to shell out some extra cash to host it at a fancy event venue or hotel? Whatever you choose, be sure to consider factors like weather, travel time, holidays, and other issues that might interfere with the event and people’s ability to attend.

9. Figure Out the Food
What kind of food (and in what quantities) will you serve at the event? Do you need to provide 3 meals and snacks? Can you get away with just serving one meal and providing coffee and light refreshments? Whatever you and your committee decide, make sure you get quotes from several vendors so you can choose the most cost-effective options.

10. Promote Your Event
Start promoting early so you can get people excited about attending the event. Advertise it in the company newsletter, talk about it on social media, and hang flyers in the office so people are reminded when it’ll be held and when they need to RSVP.

11. Send Out Surveys After the Event
Once the event is over, there’s still more work to do. Be sure to send out surveys after the fact to find out what people liked and what they’d like to see changed in the future. Encourage honest feedback and take people’s responses into account (even if they’re negative) so you can host a better event next year.

Start Planning Your Next Business Event Today
Figuring out the logistics for corporate events can be daunting, especially after taking a couple of years off. If you keep these tips in mind, though, you’ll have no trouble planning your next party and setting everyone up to have a great time.