How to Host a Successful Corporate Event with Customized Employee Gifts

by Awesome 3D Cards Engage, Retain, and Grow More Customers for Your B

To keep your business afloat, you need to have a good employee retention rate. This means you cannot ignore the importance of company morale. It is directly tied to your employees’ engagement, satisfaction, and productivity. In order to foster better working relationships within your team, you should consider hosting an event. Take your staff away from the high-stress environment of the office. Everyone needs a break at some point to step back and energize minds and bodies. And we need to know that the hard work we are doing during the week is not going unrecognized. Ensure that your employees feel appreciated by taking these critical steps for putting on a corporate event.

Determine the purpose of your event.

The date of your corporate event is going to be influenced by the purpose of the event. For instance, maybe you are having an end-of-year party to celebrate the accomplishments of your staff. In which case, it would be held around the holiday in the late winter months. The customized employee gifts that you get could be holiday themed.

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Don’t want to wait until December to recognize the team’s accomplishments? Host an event at the end of each quarter instead. This will give your team something to look forward to every three months. These events don’t have to be huge affairs and a hit to your wallet. But make them an enjoyable experience for everyone involved.

Besides specific achievement rewards, another purpose for a corporate event is team-building. Team-building events can fall at almost any time of year. The goal is to allow employees to connect with each other and feel a sense of togetherness with the company. These events might include planned activities in a casual setting, or they may be part of a formal gathering.

Corporate Event Themes

For the best impact, come up with an interesting and memorable theme. The theme should be something that will excite your attendees. Holiday-time parties are fairly simple, although you can opt to pick out a variety of color schemes. You could go with the traditional red and green, all-white, or even silver and gold. Some companies that hold team-building events decorate with colorful team spirit gear and corporate branded gifts. If you aren’t sure where to even begin with planning the theme, get inspiration from a site like Pinterest.

Set your budget and location.

Come together with your leadership team to figure out what you can afford for your event. You don’t want to spend too much money on a venue and realize that you can’t get everything else that you want. Make room in the budget for food and decorations. If you are planning on making the event potluck-style at the office, that makes there one less thing to worry about. However, for those that are interested in catering, which could be an easier option for large companies, you need to give the restaurant a decent heads-up. Along the same vein, you could go the homemade decoration route. But if your corporate event is on the fancier side, that may not be to your advantage. Think back to your purpose to set up your budget.

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Customized employee gifts should also fall into your budgeting. These don’t have to be extravagant shows of your appreciation for the hard work of your team. They can be something as simple as gift cards for a non-competing local business or gift baskets of local goods with a special 3D pop up card inside.

Allocate responsibilities to plan and run your corporate event.

Your corporate event is supposed to take some of the strain off of your employees, not add to it. This means that you shouldn’t expect them to run the show. But this doesn’t mean that you have to take on event planning alone. Get a professional team together that knows how to expertly manage events. They will handle creating a production timeline so that you can focus on running the company.

A few different roles need to be filled when you are building an event team. You might be the director, which is someone who will lead the event strategy and set the vision. Or you will pass that off to the hands of the pros. Even if you do this, make sure that they know where you stand in regard to what kind of an event you want. The next position is for the event coordinator. They will be communicating with you regularly so that you are up to date on the work that is happening behind the scenes every day. A final important job is an event marketing designer. Let them take the reins on your social media posts, landing page, and invitations.

Communicate regularly about the event.

The people who are going to be attending your corporate event should obviously know about it! If you aren’t promoting it, you can’t expect them to know your plans and be available to attend. For events that only your employees will attend, this is an easier process. You can send out a few messages and chat with them in the office to remind them of what’s coming up. That being said, this can’t be the case for events that involve people who don’t work at your company. These might be your partners, vendors, VIP clients, or even the friends and family of your employees. For this situation, do some outreach and make several announcements leading up to the big day.

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Your designer will make visual assets to use for digital marketing purposes. With several prepared graphics and messaging, you are ready to go with regular promotions on your social channels. Plus, consider getting out of the digital inbox and moving your invitations to the physical mailbox. Invest in beautiful 3D cards from Austin for your event invitations. These will be a stand-out for recipients, in the sea of the rest of their plain, flat mail pieces.

Stay calm, cool, and collected in your event planning.

As a business leader, it’s likely that you experience a lot of stress in a short amount of time. You might be wearing a lot of hats on a daily basis. But hosting a corporate event is another ball game entirely. Try not to stress yourself out when you are in the planning stages. When you put on a bigger event, it can feel like a lot is riding on your shoulders to make the event successful. However, the real point of the event is for everyone to enjoy time with each other away from the workplace. And that “everyone” includes you! Luckily, once again, you have the option to hire experts to manage this for you.

When you handle high-pressured situations at your corporate event with ease, you look more professional to your attendees. This will gain you their respect as a leader even further. Employees want to work for people who have faith in themselves and are able to neutralize problems quickly. Having a large display of frustration or anger will reflect poorly on you and the company.

Keep track of your goals for the corporate event.

You can use the BSQ framework to set goals for your event. This stands for “Think Big, Act Small, and Move Quickly.” Broken down, it means to define your ultimate goal, identify milestones along the way, and determine your timeline for reaching those milestones. Having deadlines easily visible helps you to set more achievable goals. You are actually thinking about what your unique situation entails right this very moment.

Once you have your goals in place, you need to consider your objectives. These would be your strategies for success. To be able to track your progress as you execute your objectives, use key performance indicators (KPIs). An example might be the total number of registrations received versus the number of check-ins. Do not expect that every person who registered for your corporate event will show up. Sometimes, things come up that are out of our hands; it is common to have some cancellations or no-shows. In the long-term, if you keep hosting corporate events, you may consider a KPI of the number of repeat attendees.

Thank your crowd with customized employee gifts.

Don’t let your event attendees get away without showing them your appreciation! As mentioned earlier, you should have saved room in your budget for customized employee gifts. These can go out in gift bags at the end of the event. Or you can surprise employees with them upon arrival, which will kick everything off with positive excitement.

It is a good idea to include a card with your customized employee gifts, too. And to make that good idea into a great one, 3D cards from Austin will do the trick. Create a fully custom design that is relevant to your event. When attendees look back at the artful card months or years down the line, they will be sure to remember where they received it. Perhaps you will be inspired by the card designed by Awesome 3D Cards for New York Life. It prominently and realistically displays the company headquarters building. Provided for their 175th anniversary, this popup card came as a delightful surprise to its recipients who are very familiar with that building and what it stands for.

A corporate event allows you to better engage with the champions of your brand. There is a considerable amount of value in having genuine interactions outside of the workplace. Remember that you don’t need to stop at just one big, special occasion event per year. Find other times to do something fun with your team. Have a random Wednesday meal, a Halloween costume contest, or a company field day at an entertainment center. The possibilities for office team-building are endless.