Event Planning Tips For Human Resources Departments

Events planned by human resource departments are critical to the continued success of a business. They help bring team members together and ensure that they feel more valued by the business as a whole. HR-planned events can also help to boost levels of productivity while also improving employee morale, ensuring that they continue to deliver the best performance. Planning a fantastic event can be difficult. Here are some tips that will help keep everything on the right track. 

Hire Guest Speakers

First, you should ensure that you are hiring guest speakers as part of your event planning. You can hire one or multiple professional public speakers, depending on the size of your event. 

Hiring guest speakers is a great way to ensure that your audience and team will be engaged and excited by the event. This could also help to drive up attendance numbers and ensure that your team is responsive during the event. There are lots of different types of speakers that you can choose for your event. For instance, you could select one of the best motivational speakers from an inspirational speaker agency or one of the top speakers bureaus. 

Using resources like this, you can gain access to speakers who will be great for a human resources planned business event including experts such as Kevin Gaskell who talks about achieving organisational effectiveness among other topics that could be relevant for your company. 

Remember, when selecting a speaker for your event, it’s important to check reviews and referrals. You need to ensure that a speaker is suitably enthusiastic and passionate about a particular topic. Similarly, it’s also important to ensure that they will be able to talk about a topic that is going to be of interest to the business team. You may want to create a speakers list and then narrow it down to several of the best choices for your business. 

Choose The Ideal Venue For The Keynote Speaker And Other Attendees

Next, you should think about choosing the ideal venue for your event. You should be ready to explore a variety of venues before settling on the right choices. Elements that can be considered include:

• Nearby transport links
• Overall cost
• Technology availability
• Safety requirements
• Capacity

Venues can range from a local town hall to a large exhibition centre depending on the size of your business and the plans for your event. There are venue-sourcing solutions that can make this process far easier and ensure that you have no trouble selecting the right option. You may also want to poll attendees when choosing different venues to help determine the right choice. 

An alternative option here would be to plan a virtual event with your human resources team. A virtual event is an effective solution because it will ensure that the event is more accessible, even for remote workers. It also helps to limit the costs of the event because you won’t have to pay for things such as food and to rent the venue. 

While there are cost-saving elements to a virtual event, there are also features that carry over. For instance, you can still hire a professional speaker to interact and engage with your audience. These are often available at lower rates compared to speakers for in-person events and they can be accessed through a virtual speaker bureau. 

Use Technology To Your Advantage

Another element that will be key when planning your business event is technology. Technology will help you avoid headaches when planning an event like this and ensure that everything goes smoothly. 

For instance, you can use the right technology to update your audience about any changes to the plans so that they are not caught off-guard. This could include a change of venue or a new speaker if your previously chosen talent wasn’t available. Technology partners can work well with HR teams to ensure that events are prepared and set up the right way. You can also use a mobile event app. Using an app like this you can send live notifications in real-time and even set up automated updates. 

You should also think about the hardware that will be necessary for a successful business event like this. Examples include equipment for sound as well as A/V technology. If you don’t make the right choices here, then your event is going to feel unprofessional and you will struggle to engage your audience effectively. Their attention will quickly fade if they are struggling to hear or see the information presented. 

Your venue may provide equipment for you to use. Or, might need to source this and set it up yourself. 

Track Performance At The Event Including Reactions To The Speakers List

Events managed and set up by HR teams are always going to be a sizable investment in a business. This is true whether it’s an:

• Office Christmas party
• Sales kickoff celebration
• Annual companywide

Since it requires an investment, it’s important to determine and assess whether the event was a success and delivered the right ROI. You can do this by tracking insights during the event itself and ensuring that engagement levels are high. High engagement levels will always translate into a generally high ROI overall. 

You need to track the journey of your audience and determine if there are any points where you lost them. Perhaps the speaker that you chose wasn’t compelling enough and didn’t maintain their interest. Or, maybe there were boring pieces of content that should have been cut out during the early stages of your event planning. 

Through tracking, you can note the aspects that worked well and can be included in your next planned event as well as the elements that need to be removed or improved. 

We hope this helps you plan the ultimate event with your HR team. Remember, events like this can be a fantastic opportunity to strengthen your company and improve your team’s performance. Achieving your set goals here will just be a matter of making the right choices that will appeal to attendees including selecting the best venue and hiring top guest speakers to empower and motivate your team.