Internal events or meetings are crucial to a company’s success. Whether a small weekly team meeting or a big annual company conference, internal events are your perfect chance to affect company culture, perception and leadership.

On the whole, internal meetings tend to be undervalued and underutilised. Almost 64% of survey respondents in a recent EventMB report agreed that internal events help retain employees. 92% of respondents to a Verizon survey admitted that meetings are, in fact, an excellent opportunity to contribute and a key factor in their job satisfaction.

With this in mind, it’s vital that organisations plan internal events carefully and strategically, ensuring they understand their potential impact on their colleagues. In this post, we’ll look at various ways you can boost the success of your internal events and provide some best practices for making the most of them.

1. Top-down Support from Leadership

Certain internal events, such as executive retreats, are inherently more exclusive and cater to the company leadership. These events provide the opportunity for executives to regroup, brainstorm, and strategise together about the direction of the company. They may take place once a year, once a quarter, or at different intervals.

Culture is a key aspect of the overall company direction as it ties into the executives’ vision for the company, but retreats also give leaders an opportunity to decide how that ought to be conveyed to the rest of the employees.

4 best practices for executive retreats:

  1. Understand the meeting owner’s needs/objectives.
    This goes for all types of events, but it’s something to pay particular attention to for high-level events like this.
  2. Make creative use of venue / event space.
    Executive retreats usually take place at off-site and (likely) upscale venues and resorts. Try to find ways to spice things up to encourage both productivity and relaxation in a way that wouldn’t be possible elsewhere.
  3. Send relevant materials in advance when possible.
    If there are any materials or background information that they can look over on their own ahead of time, be sure to share this with them in advance so as not to waste time unnecessarily during the event.
  4. Limit meeting / active brainstorming time.
    While these types of events are obviously valuable opportunities for leadership to meet and discuss future objectives and initiatives, it’s important to factor in a bit of R&R as well. Pay attention to event pacing and ensure that executives aren’t too burned out from meetings.

2. Encourage Collaboration and Feedback

Although exclusive events like leadership summits help define culture and set the tone for the event program overall, larger events that involve employees are generally more culturally-defining.

Company-wide meetings are a great way to promote company culture and include other events, such as team building events, to encourage interaction and engagement among employees.

5 best practices for company-wide meetings:

  1. Make sure speakers know how to keep attendees engaged.
    One of the main goals of company-wide meetings is to share information with attendees. Be sure to train speakers on how to keep presentations succinct and digestible without overwhelming the audience with text-heavy slides and tangentially related points.
  2. Plan enough breaks.
    Try to keep presentation segments short and plan breaks to give people the chance to reflect on the previous presentation, discuss it with their peers in an informal environment, and get ready for the next one.
  3. Utilise interactivity tools.
    Encouraging audience interaction is a great way to avoid exclusive one-way communication and keep employees engaged. This can be as simple as live polls throughout the event or post-session Q&A periods.
  4. Select panelists who represent / reflect the audience.
    Company-wide events include employees from different departments and who perform different functions – each with their own departmental and team dynamics and concerns. It’s important that you take this into account when determining the event breakouts and the panelists and speakers who lead them.
  5. Let the audience lead the content
    Try using a survey before the event. What do they want to achieve from it? What is it they want to hear or discuss or to know? Let them lead parts of the content so you know you’re getting the maximum from it.

3. Bolster Employee Motivation

These types of events may include award ceremonies, employee recognition, or incentive trips and programs. Employees who feel valued are more likely to feel content in their job and motivate others around them.

4 best practices for incentive events:

  1. Define your goal(s).
    Although the idea of an incentive trip is to provide a fun experience for winners, it still qualifies as a business event and should therefore be planned with certain company goals in mind. These could be related to increased sales, additional training for exemplary employees, or the completion of visioning and other side-projects.
  2. Clearly communicate the program and expectations to employees.
    You can’t expect employees to be motivated by a reward they don’t know about. Make sure to clearly inform employees of the details and the expectations. They should be aware of any deadlines, performance indicators, and associated recognition or general rewards you are offering.
  3. Tailor the program to attendees.
    The trend of personalising events is not relegated to B2B events. Once you’ve determined who the qualifiers are, make an effort to make the program as relevant as possible to them. This also means paying attention to their specific needs and choosing locations and activities that accommodate those.
  4. Tie program back to company mission/values.
    The overarching goal of incentive programs is to motivate employees and promote a positive company culture where they feel valued. You should therefore always try to relate the program back to your company’s mission in some way. This could involve team building activities, volunteering at a charitable organisation, or anything else you feel reflects and underscores your company values.

Hippo offer Event Project Management and Global Venue Finding services. Contact us today on 01372 460 100 or events@hippoevents.co.uk to see how we can assist.