The True Cost of an Unsuccessful Corporate Event
Nobody wants to put on a bad corporate event. Think of all the money that would be wasted on a low-impact event—the activities, food, and venue don’t pay for themselves.
Unfortunately, that’s not the biggest loss you will incur when participants are forced to sit through a tedious event. The actual monetary investment of the event pales in comparison to the true cost of an unsuccessful conference. Here are three things that suffer when an event doesn’t work out as planned:
1. Employee Morale and Turnover
One of the biggest reasons to host a corporate event is to engage your employees. A well-planned and executed event shows your employees that your company is invested in their professional development and on-the-job success. A company event is also an excellent opportunity to showcase how you value transparency with your employees, especially if members of your leadership team make an effort to attend or even speak at the event.
An event that fails to impress employees, then, sends the opposite message—that they may not be worth the investment. When employees feel like a company doesn’t invest in them, they’re not going to be very invested in the company in return. The result? Low employee morale. Low morale can lead to problems with a toxic workplace culture, and may even lead to a spike in turnover rates. Consider that, according to Adobe’s Work in Progress report, nearly half of surveyed workers said they would leave their jobs, even if it meant taking a smaller salary. That’s how important cultivating a culture of high morale and high engagement can be—it can make up the difference in hard dollars for employees.
Furthermore, the low morale/high turnover problem is exacerbated for younger employees. Incredibly, millennials who feel they are at a great place to work are 25 times more likely to envision a long-term future there, according to Great Places to Work.
Will one bad event have your employees fleeing? Probably not; but consistently missing the mark on your events can leave a negative impression on your employees that may leave them feeling they no longer need or want to engage.
2. Employee Productivity and Effectiveness
Your participants will feel like their time has been wasted by having to attend a poorly planned event. However, going deeper than that, an ineffective event—especially one that should have been focused on skills training—cheats employees out of learning new behavior changes that can have a huge impact on how they perform at work.
The problem, however, is that common learning techniques may come across as passive and they tend to go in one ear and out the other. When you try to passively teach new skills, you don’t give your participants a chance to practice those skills until after they return to their jobs—when they’re no longer in the safe, supportive environment of the training event. Passive teaching techniques and a lack of practice add up to generally low retention rates. When employees can’t remember the material taught, they certainly can’t apply it in any productive way to their jobs. Combat ineffective skills training by replacing passive learning techniques with active, immersive training activities. Experiential learning in particular has been found to be effective for instilling lasting behavior change—this discovery-based approach to learning leads to retention rates as high as 90 percent.
3. Satisfied Clients or Customers
Company events are often focused on how to better serve an organization’s clients or customers. Whether it’s through customer service training, or more indirectly by sharing information on new products or initiatives with participants, your company events can be a crucial reminder to your employees that customers always come first. At a lackluster event, that message becomes diluted—and it’s your clients or customers who will ultimately suffer. They’ll take notice if your employees aren’t being adequately trained or kept up to date on key customer-facing issues and may take their business elsewhere.
Finally, when you run a substandard event, your future events will suffer as well. It’s hard to convince the C-suite to invest in your company events when you don’t have positive results to show for your past events. The reality is you’ll have a harder time drumming up enthusiasm in your participants if they’re anticipating another event that feels the same as the last.
To avoid getting into a poorly run event rut, try taking a customer-centric approach to event planning. In this case, your customers are your key stakeholders as are your participants and your company’s executives. Think about how you can frame your event to most benefit these “customers.” For executives, ensure that your event clearly aligns with business goals and supports the bottom line. For participants, try to frame your event in a way that makes their lives easier. For example, new skills training can teach them ways to work more efficiently, relieving deadline-related stress at work and giving them the skills they need to climb up the corporate ladder. A customer-centric approach will help you gain employee and executive buy-in and avoid putting on a lackluster event.
Of course, even the best corporate event planners make the occasional event misstep. How have you learned from past events that didn’t quite meet your standards?
