Face it. Event agencies, banquet halls, planners, travel agents, and no matter what high level BS you toss around in the planning war room, your corporate event is going to be just the same as anyone else’s.
Your employees hate these parties and dinners. They’re awkwardly standing in their own groups. Management is on another table chatting up business and what not and as the only member from L&D you’re politely nodding along hoping your review on the event goes through well.
I’ve attended over 110 corporate events in the past 4.5 years of my corporate journey and unless it’s Google taking you to Vegas, I’ve pretty much found most of them dry and boring.
Here are 5 reasons why –
1. The thumb twiddling syndrome – Lack of direction and things to do.
2. The peer effect – Techies hangout with techies, marketers with marketers, finance with finance, and management with management. Interestingly women hangout with women irrespective of team.
3. Passive consumption of activities – Activities at corporate events are forced on and unbearably boring leading to passive and coerced consumption.
4. Not everyone consumes alcohol – A lot of corporate teams have a majority of employees not consuming alcohol. :S
5. You lay the food too soon – An hour into the event and dinner’s laid. That’s it. The event is dead.
At my new venture – SeekSherpa – we’ve come up with a brilliant way to get teams to –
a. Bond b. Innovate, c. Compete, & d. Engage actively.
We call this concept – Game Night.
Game night is an experience where the entire corporate group is divided into random teams of 4 to 6 and made to compete with one another over 4 to 5 interesting games by 2 to 4 engaging and involving conductors (Sherpas).
Typically we play – Taboo, Dumb Charades, Beer Pong, & Limbo.
4 Benefits of Game Night –
1. Active participation Typically we see 80 to 85% active participation across the group
2. Intermixing – Our random team allocation allows folks across functions and levels to interact
3. Bonding and engagement – I have personally noticed more camaraderie and revelry within each team creating memories and relationships.
4. Innovation and IQ – Teams are tested at various times during Game Night for innovative solutions and new ways of identifying patterns. This is when the true stars in the team shine through for management to identify and work with in the future.
We’ve now conducted Game Nights for some of the largest corporates – Accenture, Google, InfoEdge, Indian Law Firms etc. and got 5 star feedback each time from the L&D team, management, and employees.
I would love to work with you in organising a Game Night for your team. Write into me at [email protected] and we’ll set it up.
Sponsored by SeekSherpa