Finding Virtual Solutions for 3 Key Internal Events
Remote work has grown in popularity over the past two years, and this trend is not going to be slowing down anytime soon. Results from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes show that just over half of respondents would like to work from home at least two days a week after the pandemic wanes. That’s a sizable chunk of the workforce.
Getting your employees together for internal events can be challenging with a distributed workforce. As remote work becomes more popular and more businesses seek ways to host events online, it falls to business owners to restructure some internal events to make them remote-friendly including corporate training sessions, virtual team building retreats, and sales kick-off meetings.
Corporate Training
Training events provide professional development opportunities and employee education. They can be targeted towards a particular department or can be designed for all employees in your organization. In every instance, you’ll need to pass on critical knowledge to all relevant stakeholders.
Conducting training in situations where half of your staff works from home requires a bit more strategy than hosting an all in-person meeting. Talk to any college student, and they’ll tell you that learning online is no picnic. That’s often because listening to an hour-long lecture with few opportunities to engage with your classmates or with your teacher makes for an incredibly boring experience.
One way to keep attendees engaged is to mix up the formats. You can use multiple presentation styles, including live-streaming, webinars with interactive Q&A sessions, and virtual breakout rooms where smaller groups of employees can work on a project and present it back to the whole team.
Additionally, meeting facilitators or speakers can post real-time polls and questions to participants to encourage engagement. Many companies incorporate video games, role playing, and simulations in employee training programs.
Virtual Team Building Retreats
A company retreat can be a great way to encourage team building and employee engagement. Perhaps the pandemic forced you to cancel last year, and now you’re skeptical about how well a virtual team building retreat will do the job. We don’t blame you. It may seem impossible to pivot an event like a retreat to an online event platform and make it genuinely successful, but it’s not.
You can still bring your team together with a virtual team building retreat – and many employees may even prefer this as it won’t disrupt their family time or personal obligations by requiring extended travel. . No, you won’t be ziplining in the mountains, but what about a morning yoga routine or a midday dance-off? Can’t have that meet and greet by a real campfire? How about some games and activities at a virtual one?
Maybe present a live, interactive virtual show with a well-known magician or host a virtual employee talent show.
You can create your own experiences, such as a scavenger hunt. For instance, have everybody on your team take a few minutes to collect five items from around their home that reflect their personality. Then, have them come back to the screen and explain why they picked those particular items.
Or, ask your team members to share something unique at their home. Who knew that your company attorney raises chickens in her backyard? Or that the facilities manager enjoys playing the piano when he comes home. These kinds of activities will help your employees get to know each other in a more personal space, something they can’t do in the office or even at an in-person event in another location.
When it’s over, a good idea is to give your employees a forum where they can continue to communicate socially and share favorite moments from the retreat. You want your team to know this event is important, and just because it’s virtual this year doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and memorable.
Sales Kick-Offs
A Sales Kick-Off meeting, or SKO, should communicate what you want your sales team to accomplish for the year. It sets the theme, re-states and aligns corporate goals with your team , and encourages peer networking and knowledge-sharing. Just like an in-person meeting, a virtual SKO can also be all those things and more. It just takes the right strategy.
Begin with an inspiring keynote speaker or presenter. You want to get your team pumped up and excited to be there. This person can hail from either inside or outside of the company. It’s their ability to engage and motivate that’s important, as well as their representation of what success looks like.
Additionally, consider inviting a few satisfied customers to speak at your SKO. They have a wealth of knowledge they can share with your team about how and why they chose to do business with your company and what keeps them coming back.
Like any other virtual event, an SKO should include a variety of educational sessions. Sessions can feature panel discussions and Q&As around company vision, sales strategies, and potential customer issues.
You can also host breakout sessions to allow attendees to practice the skills that they are learning. Conducting role-plays and simulations with live feedback and solving real or fictional case studies also will increase interaction during the discussion. You want your team members to leave each session with relevant and actionable information to help them in their jobs.
Employing the Experts
Learning to conduct important company business in a virtual space is challenging. For those looking to step up their game, interactive virtual event platforms can provide user-friendly solutions to make your events highly engaging, enlightening, and entertaining. Designed to meet the needs of a variety of businesses and meetings, they can be customized to make your next virtual event the best it can be.
Set up a demo today to learn more about how Social27 Virtual Event Platform can help you create engaging internal events for your employees.
