Make your Corporate Anniversary more exceptional-

Do not engage your employee; create an experience; build it up. It’s one of a few staff engagement projects you’ll be doing in a year. Don’t waste the opportunity. Don’t pander to a committee that doesn’t understand the importance of these two factors. Pander instead to the employee that needs and craves the engagement.

There are two main points you should understand before planning your annual day or Corporate Anniversary.  First, an annual day is component of your internal communication and is, therefore, a marketing event. It has a reason, and it has a message. Or rather, it should. Secondly, it is employee engagement.

How can you make your annual day more effective?

Here’s a quick list of 6 things that you can start with to make your annual day useful and, hopefully, different. I might not go in-depth into each of the points, but we can surely discuss that offline.

1. Challenge your event agency to be creative

And pick from the list of radical ideas that have not tried and tested. While you’re doing this, do yourself a favor and forget the big stage set-up that makes everything uni-directional. Settle for experiential instead.

If you poll your employees about last year’s celebration, you will know that your stage is forgotten. The lights and the sound stacks go unnoticed. But throw yourself into an interactive experience and create memories. They are remembered and cherished by everyone.

Event agencies like Hire4event have a lot more ideas than what you give them credit for so start your brief by asking them to think outside the proverbial box and stage. Tell them you want something that’s not been seen in your circle before. An idea doesn’t cost you money. Evaluate the concept before you check the cost.

2. Say no to routine themes

Dress-ups and petty themes are great for your kid’s birthday party or your unimaginative competitor. Even a casual search for Corporate Anniversary and annual day themes gives you a list of the top ten ideas that have been ground out so many times that it haven’t yet registered. By all means, have a plan. It helps to keep everything together. But please leave out the silly ones.

Yes, you’ll get a lot of photos, but the only shares will be within the team. Aim for something that will go viral. For example, how about Times Square? It will be interactive. It can have food stalls and street hawkers, and It can also be an experience. There is no stage, but there is a square right in the middle of your set-up.

3. Engage through experience, not demonstration

It is true that a famous artist will create much-needed hype and generate interest. However, the experience is what creates memories. So spend your money on the experience, not on the stage set up. No one can even remember what it was last year and most won’t forget the carnival stalls either.

But they will remember group experiences if you invest in them. Have three days of experience at the office and a party on the final day. Attempt to set a world record. Or create the most massive mural possible with all your employees.

4. Use the buzz engagement opportunity

You want everyone to talk about it. So what can you do that will get everyone talking? Look at the latest trends. Create company-wide music videos but first check for copyright. As in the previous example, if you get changed and do something noteworthy, you will be rewarded.

Not necessarily an award, but you have your commitment part locked in if you create pride of location. This should be your goal. Because if you can create a buzz, then your employees are happy to have been a part of something so cool.

5. Get rid of committees

This one is tough, but get rid of the committee. Group decision-making is the empowerment of compromises. The more people you have, the more commonplace your ideation will be. If you want a committee, set clear goals; the annual day can’t be the same as the last five years.

Change the format. Change the engagement. And for God’s sake, get rid of the bags, backpacks, jackets or trolleys that you are dishing out. No one wants them anymore. They didn’t want them four years ago, either.

6. Know the ROI is—moral employee

Last but not least, don’t calculate based on overall figures but on a per-person basis. That’s when you will indeed be able to fix the right budget. Once you do that, calculate your ROI on the experience and the buzz you will create through your event, rather than the number of items on the menu.

Your Return on Investment is not determined by knowing how many people turned up. Those are cheap Indian wedding statistics. Your ROI depends on the buzz length. Are you still hearing about the fantastic event during your next recruitment drive?

Are your employees still talking about how much fun they had? Everyone likes to tell a story, and everyone who wishes to say to a story wants to mention one that is better than the previous one. It’s a contest. Have you given your employees the edge to tell their friends that the company they belong to has held the best ever annual day?

OR

Set your objectives, spend on the experience to be different, and create a buzz. Spread the word. Show pride. This should meet your primary goals of employee engagement and internal communication and reinforce the belief that this is truly a cool place, and we are proud to be here. Make more out of it through Best event management company, like Hire4Event. Stay updated for more blogs or updates in Corporate Anniversary and all kinds of event ideas with us.