Corporate events are an excellent way for companies to engage with employees. If you happen to plan these events, this article is for you. The following fun corporate event ideas will help you plan the event of the century.
How to pick the best corporate event ideas
Employee happiness is one of the most crucial factors in running a successful company. Happy employees tend to perform better, talk better about the company, and contribute more to the company’s overall profits and success.
A corporate event is only one factor that contributes to employee happiness, so make sure to add other employee engagement ideas to the mix. Nevertheless, a work event gives employees the chance to create positive memories.
When choosing a theme for your corporate event, make sure to consider the following aspects.
Engagement
49% of marketers say that audience engagement is the most significant contributing factor to having a successful event. So, your goal should be to turn attendees into active participants and create conversations between colleagues. This aspect is vital for remote workers, as they might not see each other daily.
An event engagement tool like Walls.io is all you need.
Interaction
To engage one person individually is one thing, but to make attendees interact with each other is another thing. So whatever event idea you come up with, make sure to include interactive elements that encourage employees to connect.
Privacy
If you’re planning an internal event for employees at your company, it’s a good idea to respect everyone’s privacy preferences. Some things to consider before the event:
- Ask for everyone’s permission to be in photos.
- Ask what the preferred format is, in person, virtual or a combination of the two.
- If the event involves social media in some way, ask people if they are comfortable posting on their profiles. Not everyone might be on board, so you should explore non-social media-related options too.
Innovation
Ice breaker games are a thing of the past! Instead, show your corporate event attendees that you keep up with the latest event trends by researching modern tools and platforms. The employees will appreciate the innovative factor.
Content
You heard right. Maybe as an HR manager or event planner, you might think you’re not the one in charge of creating company content, but you should! Creating employee-focused content, such as photos of everyone enjoying an event, is a great idea. Then, you can add the content to the career website and attract potential employees with it.
Corporate event ideas employees will enjoy
Now moving on to the juicy part of this article, here are 10 corporate event ideas, including a social wall as an engagement tool.
1. Houseplant workshop
Everyone likes plants, but most of us manage to kill them after a few weeks of having them. Give employees the gift of botany by inviting them to participate in a local plant workshop.
During the workshop, ask attendees to take photos of their plant babies and add them to a social wall. They can add the pictures via social media with a branded hashtag or as Direct Posts. After a few weeks, ask everyone to share their progress!
It’ll be a joy for everyone to share their plants alive and thriving!
Have employees share their plant babies on a social wall!
2. Virtual Reality trip
You’ve probably heard about VR, but did you know that there are virtual reality sessions tailored to employee events? These are some of the many types of trips that you can take via VR:
- A trip to a Caribbean island,
- An amusement park, with all rides included,
- A historical tour around your city,
And pretty much anything else you can think of.
As always, make sure to take photos of everyone wearing the goggles or ask each person to share a testimonial of their experience on a social wall. This employee-generated content will be valuable to attract new talent!
3. Corporate-friendly Drag Queen
If your company focuses on diversity and inclusion, a corporate-friendly drag queen could be the ideal emcee or host for your next virtual or in-person event.
Drag queens are well known for their wit and humor, making them the ideal person to break the ice with attendees at corporate events. Think of them as the missing piece for an engaging event!
If you happen to go with this idea, people will want to post about it on social media. So, remind everyone of the company hashtag to collect all the content on a social wall and reuse it for HR purposes.
4. Trivia
A trivia or quiz is the perfect excuse to test the brainiest of employees. The best thing about trivia is you can host it online and offline!
Invite all employees to tune in to a social wall with real-time updates and activate Direct Posts. There you can promote the big prize, and announce the winners of each round. In addition, everyone will post selfies and comments directly to the wall.
5. Corporate-friendly stand-up comedian
There’s no better icebreaker than laughter, so hiring a stand-up comedian to entertain the crowd might be a good idea.
Corporate-friendly comedians usually avoid talking about politics, religion or prejudices to make their shows apt for everyone. If you decide to get one for your corporate event, ask the comedian to provide an introduction video and post it on a social wall. This way, you show a teaser of the event and build suspense.
6. Employee appreciation awards
Did you know that 69% of employees would work harder if they received more recognition?
You can turn their wishes into reality by planning an employee appreciation award ceremony. This is a regular award ceremony, but each employee goes home with an award. The fun part about this idea is that you can make up random categories, such as Most Empathetic, Best Small Talk, or Best Dressed!
As always, make sure to photograph each award winner and post all the photos to a private social wall with Direct Posts so that employees can share their wins with friends and family.
Keep your internal events private with a social wall with Direct Posts!
7. Sales contest
Research shows that sales teams benefit from the competition as it is healthy for growth and innovation.
Push your team to reach a goal within a period, and ask them to share their progress regularly on a social wall. Bear in mind that this contest shouldn’t be about driving more sales directly but about elevating performance and team morale.
8. Costume competition
There is so much creativity hiding in your team, and costume competition is a perfect opportunity to let employees’ imaginations run wild.
You may have one winner or many categories like “best PG-13 costume” and “best group costume.” The purpose of this contest is to let employees mingle and have fun. If you have remote employees, they can participate too via zoom or by posting their photos on a social wall.
9. Virtual party games
Nowadays, most employees can work from home, so why not have regular get-togethers from home too?
Virtual party games are an excellent way for teams to socialize off work and from the comfort of their home. These are some of the games you can play:
All you’ve got to do is create frequent zoom calls, for example, once a week, and invite people to join. A good idea to motivate team members to join is to have a social wall dedicated to posting screenshots of scores and the winners every week.
10. Karaoke Club
Use the power of pop music to let employees show teamwork and have lots of fun!
You can pick a different genre every time you meet and assign judges that score the participants. As always, make sure to take plenty of photos and videos and ask everyone to use the company hashtag when posting to social media to collect the content on a social wall.
There are many ways to engage a crowd, but an event engagement tool like Walls.io is your best option. Not only can you implement a social wall on all types of events and platforms, but you can also let it do the work for you.
I hope these corporate event ideas are what you were looking for.