Step-by-step: Planning a Corporate Event.

So you’ve been given the task of organising an event for your workplace, and now you’re sitting at your computer, feeling a little lost as to where to start. Unless you’ve done it before, event planning can be a little overwhelming, but this step-by-step guide to organising corporate events is a good place to start!

There are a few things to consider when planning a company event. Firstly, what’s the aim of this event? Is it a team-building exercise? Perhaps it’s an away-day focusing or staff wellbeing? Or maybe it’s just an excuse to party! Identifying the aims of the event is the first step to planning it.

The second step is to find a date (or rough idea of a date) that you want to event to be. Maybe you’re going down the classic Christmas party route.. or perhaps you’re looking for more of a festival vibe, with a Summer get-together.

The next step is the painful one.. budget. Before deciding on anything else you need to know the budget you’re working with. There are lots of options available for many kinds of budget, and once you know what you’re working with it gives you a much better idea of what you’re looking for.

Another really useful step is to identify the most important aspects of the event. Is the Venue the most important to you? Or is it all about the food? Maybe entertainment is where you want to majority of your budget to go? Dividing you’re budget is a really useful step, and although it’s not the most exciting part of event planning, it saves you a lot of time going forward!

By this time you should have a pretty solid base on which you can start planning all the details. You know the type of event you’re planning, guest numbers, event date, and budget.. so this is where the fun starts!
There are lots options for venues and suppliers, so have a look around and find the ones that match your event, and budget. Reach out to different Companies to get quotes, and finalise dates that will work. Venues will often have rules that Suppliers and Caterers need to follow. The easiest way to ensure this it to provide the venue with the contact details for all of your Suppliers, and leave the Venue to organise them.

And that’s it! Make sure to keep in regular contact with the Venue, Suppliers, and Caterers on the lead-up to the event, and check in on the day.