Upscale Corporate Event Planning

To ensure that you get value from the time and money invested in your corporate events, there are several pitfalls that your company should avoid.

Allocate sufficient time for planning.

There is no way that you can expect to pull off an effective corporate event if 1 - 2 weeks prior to the event you are just contacting suppliers.

Move out of the downtown core.

It is amazing how resistant some organizations can be to moving out of the downtown core. Often, by move just outside city limits, one can pay a fraction of the cost for an absolutely gorgeous venue and gourmet cuisine.

Don't splurge on food and accommodation and scrimp on the keynote speaker.

You need an experienced keynote speaker to dazzle your audience. I remember a company that contacted us in a panic. They had blown most of their budget for a top of the line venue with all the bells and whistles. They had little left to pay for a speaker. We suggested a couple of cost effective venues but eventually had to pass on that booking as they insisted on the high end facility and could not afford to hire an experienced professional.

Get your priorities straight.

We'll say more about alcohol later but here is one example. We've seen companies insist that they have to have an open bar for the duration of an event and then find that they have to go with one of the cheapest options for their main course. We even seen organizations pass up beautiful venues just so that they can spend more on booze.

Due to the global economic meltdown, organizations are using a variety of strategies to trim their corporate events budgets.

At first glance, delegating responsibility for planning a corporate event to a cross-functional teams of inexperienced employees seems to be a win-win scenario. Companies can save money and also provide excellent opportunities for building the skill set of employess. Unfortunately, this strategy is not foolproof. It can backfire and have unintended consequences including:

- exploding your budget
- reducing the emphasis of initiatives as more emphasis gets placed on "fun", than what is of strategic importance and logistically feasible
- placing a strain on relationships with suppliers
- eroding corporate goodwill due to unrealistic expectations

The main problem with committees is that equal weight tends to be given to the vote of all team members despite differences in experience and expertise. Groupthink ensures that initiatives get watered down to the lowest common denominator. It doesn't have to be that way. The following tips will go a long way to helping you avoid "death by committee" when you plan your next corporate event.

Get the Right Resources and Structure in Place

1. Use the services of a professional event planner and ensure that the committee takes his or her advice seriously. If your budget is limited, use the event planner as a consultant. Involve them at the outset of the project to start things off on the right trap. Vet proposed decisions and plans with the event planner at critical junctures in the project planning process. Get feedback, identify potential problems, and get ideas for solutions and use them.

If the committee has a vision that is "carved in stone", you're wasting your money by hiring a professional event planner. Why pay for advice that you have no intentions of using. Instead, hire a more junior event coordinator to do some of your legwork and assist you with execution.

2. Use committees of junior employees to plan social or recreational events, not initiatives with strategic significance. Planning a company picnic or Christmas party is a great developmental opportunity for staff. Initiatives with strategic significance such as business team building sessions, executive retreats, team building retreats, and conferences do need to be steered and driven "from the top". Delegate these initiatives to a juniour committee and they will be "dumbed down" based on what is "fun".

3. For large groups, remember that logistics are key and they will make or break your event. Inexperienced employees have a hard time grasping this. Event planners can help you streamline logistics and develop a sound logistical plan to ensure that your event flows smoothly.

Ensure Effectiveness with Executive Involvement

4. Yes executives are busy but you can increase your liklihood of succes by involving them at critical junctures in your planning process.

An executive briefing for the event planner is crucial. Ensure that your event planner meets with the executive sponsor at the outset to obtain a clear, specific, and unfiltered briefing re: objectives and priorities. To ensure that the initiative is still on track and in line with his or her vision, there should also be executive checkpoints:

- halfway through the planning cycle
- a few weeks before the event

A 15 minute executive briefing for the committee and task force should is also critical. This will give the event planner an opportunity to refer back to the initial briefing if things are starting to get off track.

5. Delegate fact finding and brainstorming but never decision making. Setting a group of inexperienced employees loose to make decisions without guidance and direction is a recipe for disaster. Ultimate strategic decision-making should rest with a member of your executive team. Logistical and tactical decisions should rest with a director, executive assistant or other experienced team member.

Simplify Planning and Decision Making

6. Use a two-tiered structure consisting of a small committee with decision making authority and a smaller task force to support them.

7. When building your committee, follow a rule of 3. Keep your committee to 3 members. This is a nice manageable number for making decisions and an odd number in case some decisions have to be put to vote. The recommended composition for this committee is:

- 1 member or your executive team or director
- an experienced executive assistant or manager
- 1 team member who has previously served on a task force

Leverage the Power of Tasks Forces (Sub-Committees)

8. Have a larger task force (or sub-committee) of no more than 6 individuals to work with your committee. Their role is to brainstorm, contribute ideas, and execute decisions and plans. However, this task force should not have decision-making authority. You want informed decisions not "majority rules" regardless of the soundness of decisions.

9. Ensure that at least one task force member has experience in planning a variety of events. One powerful strategy that is often overlooked is to have an executive assistant or one of your internal facilitators or trainers coach and mentor the team. Often, event planning expertise resides within your organization. Tap into it, use it and transfer it to other members of your team.

10. Train your task force. Use an event planner or internal resource such as an experienced executive assistant to give your task force some basic training about project management, planning, decision making (in preparation for future responsibilities), hosting procedures, conflict management, customer relations, etc. This training can be provided in modules throughout the project.

Get Down to Specifics

11. Develop a full project plan and give each member of your task force a specific area of responsibility. Develop detailed checklists for the planning process, set up and the actual event. Get task force members to do fact finding and bring information, ideas and suggestions back to the group. Possible areas of responsibility include:

- venue
- catering
- entertainment
- printing and duplication
- invitations and RSVPs
- design of nametags, table markers, programmes

12. Responsibility for components with strategic significance should rest with an experienced member of your committee (of 3). As stated earlier, initiatives with strategic significance such as business team building sessions, executive retreats, team building retreats, and conferences need to be steered and driven "from the top".

Don't let death by committe kill Your next corporate event. Pull out these tips and use them to increase the success of each and every corporate event.

Facilitated, interactive cooking team building that combines team cooking challenges with feedback about team dynamics and a debriefing about lessons learned and how they can apply to business. We have a competitive restaurant simulation in which teams have to develop a theme, menu and marketing plan for the restaurant and cook dishes from their sample menu for judging. We also have sessions insipred by the popular TV shows. Iron Chef and Next Great Chefs.

Cooking team building sessions are currently available in Toronto, Dubai, Oman and Jamaica. In Saudi Arabia, we can organize a recreational cooking team building event for you using local gourme chefs. The team feedback and debriefing are not available. We would be pleased to work with teams from Saudi Arabia if they are able to travel to Dubai or Oman.

There is no way to address this topic without just coming out and saying it. "Watch the booze." Again it comes down to priorities and there is also the matter of liability.

Here are some other tips:

Hire a Smart Serve or TIPS trained bartender and EVEN USE HIM OR HER FOR YOUR HOSPITALITY SUITE if there are members of your team who tend to overdue.

The bartender will have received training to detect potential problems and turn off the tap when appropriate. This will protect your company without making you look like the party pooper.

Be Aware of Local Practices

Depending on where you have your event, there may be certain cautions you need to absorb. For example, I don't know if it is by coincidence or desgin, but I have often noticed police R.I.D.E checks in close proximity to banquet facilities in Ontario's Greater Toronto area, police often set up R.I.D.E. This can be a surprise especially if your event has taken place in what appears to be a remote area. If it is apparent that someone has been drinking blows over the legal limit in a breathalizer test, the keys to the card could be taken for a while and there could be charges. What a horrible way to end an enjoyable evening.

If you're doing an event overseas, don't assume that what you can do at home you can do abroad. If you're in Dubai you can serve alcohol at an event at a hotel, however, public consumption of alcohol and public drunkeness will not be tolerated. Move next door to Sharjah and alcohol is prohibited.

Be aware of potential legal liability

Many companies are not aware of the fact that if they allow the liquor to flow freely, your company, the venue and the event planner (if the company's name is on the contract) could be held liable if someone gets into an accident and injures someone on their way home from a corporate event.

In a recent high-profile Ontario case(Hunt v. The Sutton Group Realty), the bar and the employer were found 25% responsible for the $1 million in damages that was awarded. An employee suffered permanent brain damage as the result of an car accident that took place after she left a corporate Christmas party and drove while she was drunk. This was in spite of the fact that Hunt had refused 3 offers of a ride home. The basis for the Ontario Superior Court runing was that the employer should have taken more aggressive action to stop her from driving even if they had to confiscate her car keys or call the police.

In Childs v. Des Ormeaux, while the judge did not rule in Childs' favour, he did underscore the fact that a "duty of care" exists between host and guests and indicate that he would have been willing to assign 15% liability to the host.

Re-think the open bar policy and turn off the tap earlier.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with a cocktail reception and a glass of wine with dinner. Rather than letting the liquor flow freely all evening, it's wise to serve it early.

Bus 'em

As an extra precaution, why not hire a party or luxury bus to take people back and forth from your head office to the event venue? This will give people more time to get the alcohol out of their system. However, if people are drinking up until the time they board the bus, even a bus will be of limited value.

Use Designated Drivers

IF employees will be travelling by car to corporate events, ensure that there is a designated driver for each vehicle. Yes, this may make you appear to be a party pooper but it is better to be a party pooper than to pay out a large settelement due to some alcohol related accident.

Call a Cab

You might also want to consider having a backup plan. Provide a taxi to take guests who overdo it direclty home or to hotel accommodation where they can sleep it off.

This is so important that I am going to repeat it.

Courts throughout the USA and recently in Canada are rendering judgements that hold companies liable when employees consume too much alcohol at company-sponsored functions and then cause accidents or injure someone after leaving the event.

The bottom line is this....if an intoxicated employee insists on driving, threaten disciplinary action, take away the car keys, and if all else fails, call the police.

It's important to plan wisely and ensure that booze does not bust your next corporate event.

Consider Obtaining Event or Party Alcohol Liability Insurance

In view of recent court rulings, this may be a wise course of action. A number of brokers now offer this. Just do a search on-line for Party Alcohol Liability Insurance.