You’ve decided to organize a recognition event! That’s awesome! Your employees are going be so excited! But…how? How do you organize a great event for your employees?
First, you need to do some pre-planning. You need to set a budget for the entire event. This includes the venue, the awards, the catering you may do, any gifts you are giving out, photography, videography…it’s almost like planning a wedding! This is probably the easiest part of the whole process.
So you have the venue, you have the date, you have all of the photography, videography, and catering set up, you’ve hired a sweet DJ to play awesome music that will keep you and your employees pumped up. Now what?
Plan the day! That’s right…you have to make sure the day flows well.
At Crystal D, we have our annual company event called WOW Day. Read the 2017 winners recap here! WOW Day is not just awards presentations. It’s mostly awards presentations, but we make sure the whole day is fun. We start out by getting everyone pumped up and full of coffee since we start out at 8:00 in the morning. And then we eat. Because breakfast is important!
We also like to be entertained, so we play games. While we love seeing our coworkers win awards, we also need a break that also allows for team building. We are assigned tables so we aren’t just confined to our departments. We are a small enough company that we can easily get to know the entire company, and WOW Day is a great place to do that. We’re also competitive, so these team building games are also competitions against each other.
But we also feature presentations by our company president, Chuck Dahlgren, on his vision and message for the upcoming year, and a presentation by our vice president of operations, Mike Irvine, on our sales numbers for the previous year. A lot of people are bored by numbers, but Mike does an awesome job at making it fun and interesting. Chuck and Mike both have an awesome energy that gets the whole company excited for what’s to come.
The focus of the day, however, is definitely the awards. We give out a lot of awards too! We make sure that each recipient feels important and valued, which is an incredibly important aspect of a recognition event.
You’ve planned the day, and now it’s time to select your winners and the physical awards you are going to give them. But how are these winners going to get their awards? The presentations of course!
There are a lot of things to consider when choosing awards presenters. We have done different things at WOW Day and our other recognition events. We’ve had managers present awards at company meetings for years of service, and we’ve had them present at WOW Day. We’ve shied away from having managers present at WOW Day because then you know which department the winner is coming from. This year, we had the previous year’s winner announce the newest winner. This works well, especially if the winner is coming from a smaller department. For example, our IT department consists of two people. If our IT manager is presenting an award, we know EXACTLY who the winner is. What also works for us is that the previous winner announced the newest winner, but their manager presented the award and gave great speeches about their employees.
Whoever you choose to be a presenter, make sure they are prepared and have great things to say about the winner. There’s nothing worse than winning an award only to have someone stumble over their words when explaining why you won the award.
But what if your presenter doesn’t know what to say? How do you help them? This is actually pretty easy. Try using this format:
- I saw what you did.
- I appreciate it.
- Here’s why it’s important.
- Here’s how it makes me feel.
It doesn’t have to be a long presentation. It just has to be meaningful and sincere. Tell Sally the specific things she has done to be the award winner. Tell her she is appreciated. Tell her how these specific things are related to and important to the corporate values of the company. Most importantly, tell her how you feel and thank her for her contributions. And, of course, congratulate her.
Short and simple, yet sweet and touching.
So…you’ve got that all under control. You planned the event, and it’s event day! Everything goes smoothly, and the day comes to a close. Now what?
Feedback. You need feedback.
You may think it was an amazing event, but Jack may think it was awful. Gather feedback from attendees, presenters, award winners, and everyone involved in planning the event in your company. You learn a lot from those who have been at your event, and some of these things may need to be addressed before your next event.
Talk to Us!
What is important to you in a recognition event?
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