A company kickoff event at the beginning of the year is a great way to align employees with company goals and objectives. These kickoffs serve to get employees excited about the new year by motivating them to start their work year off right and enabling clear communication between teams.
Regardless of its benefits, company kickoffs need to be engaging, inspiring, and informative, and hitting all three of these elements can be a challenge - especially in a globally distributed company.
Whether you’re a business leader or have been given the task of executing a kickoff event, here are some best practices to help you save both time and money when planning a company-wide kick-off.
Having clear objectives for your company kick-off event will ensure that employees walk away with the necessary knowledge and motivation to start off their year.
The event should communicate the company's vision and mission to provide a clear understanding of its purpose. Celebrating key achievements and milestones from the previous year will boost morale and instill confidence in the company’s success. Also, outlining strategic priorities for the upcoming year sets expectations among employees.
When you understand why you’re hosting an event, the following steps become easier.
Think about any essential information that you should share with your employees that will align their goals with those of the company.
You can prepare by hosting a smaller meeting with key stakeholders who can help you put the bigger picture together.
Event details include scheduling an appropriate date and time for the event, a location (in-person, remote, or hybrid), and ensuring you have the necessary tools and resources to host the event including any technological equipment, tables, or seating.
If you are hosting an in-person or hybrid event, ensure that the location is easily accessible by train or bus for those who transit, or that there is parking available for those who drive.
With Epoch, teams can input event details to help communicate logistics across teams in a way that is easily accessible for all employees.
Developing a clear agenda will help you stay organized with what information is being communicated throughout the event. Consider sharing this agenda with employees so that they can be prepared to listen and ask any questions.
After the event, sharing highlights and key takeaways can be useful for employees to look back on throughout the year. It will also help align employees who missed the meeting with company objectives and provide insights into what information was shared during the event.
Create a follow-up plan and check in with employees who attended the event to ensure they are aligned with what needs to be done. Feedback forms can be a great way to initiate a reflection process immediately following the event.
Many organizations have globally distributed workforces which makes it increasingly challenging to host company-wide events. If not planned strategically, these events can wind up costing a fair amount of time, money, and resources.
Hosting a virtual or hybrid event is a great way to get globally distributed employees together and align them with company objectives that do not cost a ton of money.
Note: When hosting hybrid or virtual events, it is important to consider different time zones across teams. Check out our article on challenges, strategies, and tools for hosting events across different time zones here.
The beginning of a new year can oftentimes be a busy period for employees. When hosting a company kickoff event, effective communication can make the difference between employees showing up or not - so it is important for your event to not get lost in the noise.
Epoch is a great tool for event communications. The platform will streamline pre-event marketing, invitations, registration, and reminders. Check out this article for ways that Epoch can help your company streamline communication for your events here.
Collecting feedback post-event is extremely important because it helps you improve future events based on previous feedback and lets employees know they are heard.
With Epoch, collecting feedback is easy. Event hosts can pre-make feedback surveys. Once the event is finished, all employees who attended the event have the opportunity to fill out a personalized feedback form.
To help make planning your company kickoff even less stressful and more fun, you can use Epoch to streamline all these steps. People teams at Reddit, Asana, and more use Epoch to plan and scale their offsites. Epoch also provides them with impactful engagement and feedback analytics. Epoch provides a simple way to communicate and promote events to your workforce, helping events reach employees where they prefer to receive messages. Book a demo today!
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