It doesn’t matter whether your company event will be for thirty people or three hundred, the process for successfully organising a corporate event will always be the same. If you have a suitable plan, it should be able to scale up or down whatever the event. With a plan consisting of a handy and thorough checklist you can be sure that your event will always go off without a hitch.

It would be advisable to start by making an announcement within your company in order to round up some willing volunteers. This should be an open invitation to all of the employees. It may be the case that you will have to do some individual campaigning in order to get some helpers on board – no one said it wouldn’t take a little extra effort! If there are people within the company who have helped with previous years events then it would make sense to start by asking these people.

The next step is to sit everyone down to have an initial discussion. Don’t forget to include refreshments as offering incentives and rewards to your kind volunteers will make the task that much less of a chore. Even if your group of volunteers are busy on a day to day basis the prospect of free food and drink will always be enticing! At this meeting establish a tight agenda and a timescale so that you will know how to delegate as much work as you can to the right people. If your position within the office is a staff manager then assign the job of delegation to someone directly below you, or a ‘right hand man’ if you will. After the meeting pencil in a follow up meeting to discuss the schedule so that a consensus can be established on dates and times.

For now you should keep any decisions with regards to catering for a later date. However at this stage you should at this stage decide on a suitable budget. Take into consideration all of your potential overheads and perhaps add a little extra for any unforeseen costs.

Organise further meetings so that you can assess the progress of the event planning. Provide feedback to your volunteers and always praise those who are meeting their objectives. As the day of the event draws nearer start to organise meetings with caterers and entertainers and finalise all of the logistics. Line managers must be kept up to date with proceedings and notified when and where the event will be held.

Make sure you plan well ahead so that you can send invitation out to employees around 6 weeks before the event is due to take place. If your event requires RSVPs then make sure to include a return date on the invitations. Make sure that your coordinator has as a system in place ready to collect and organise the returned invitations.

Have your final meeting one week before the event to make sure that all the details are finalised and that everything is in place. On the day of the event make a point of going to find all of your volunteers to thank them personally. If you can add a gift then that will help them to feel like they have been rewarded. Make sure that you enjoy yourself and mingle with those in attendance. Their valuable feedback will prove useful for future events!

Author Bio: Trevor Richards is writing on behalf of Owl Event Management, a leading UK corporate event management company.

Category: Advice
Keywords: event, company, business, events, PR, planning, advertising, marketing