It is safe to say that a corporate event is a high-pressure environment. Everything needs to be arranged, from the budget to corporate travel to the agenda. The list is never-ending and such a big list is bound to stir up some emotions.
Even if you have some event planning experience, these kinds of events usually come with great responsibilities and unexpected challenges. There’s just so much to consider. Will the date suit everyone in the company? Will people be able to travel or should you consider a hybrid event? If you can get everyone in the same place, how will you organize it all?
Planning is rewarding if you manage to pull it off with minimal issues but have no doubt – there will be some problems along the way.
Don’t despair just yet, though! There are certain ways to make sure that things run as smoothly as possible. In this article, you’ll find the most useful tricks to prevent conflict when arranging a corporate event.
Tip no. 1: Optimize the business travel management
Meeting everyone face-to-face is the best and most productive option, of course. Now that the quarantines are over, businesses finally have the opportunity to gather everyone at the same event.
If you have the budget and opportunity to do this, it should be number one on your planning list. Use this small business travel management guide by Travel Perk to cover all the bases. You might find resource management to be challenging when it comes to travel, but thanks to TravelPerk, you can save yourself a lot of trouble and loads of cash.
Corporate travel often comes with problems. People go over the budget, so you have conflict figuring out who is to pay the difference. There are delays in flights, problems with itineraries, and the never-ending hassle of finding accommodation, transport, etc.
If you want to make your corporate event a success, start by hiring a travel agency for your business. This is a sure way to keep track of all travel, stay within your budget, and thanks to TravelPerk, get the best deals to keep your employees satisfied.
Tip no. 2: Get conflict resolution training
Event planners aren’t as chill as they might look to you in the face of trouble. They have training and experience, so they know how important it is to remain calm when problems occur while they plan their events. Unless you have tons of experience planning corporate events, you are bound to feel stressed over everything.
When you have so much on your plate and everyone is trying to organize the big event, it’s easy to get into conflict. The smallest things can turn into big fights and problems, and there’s often no turning back from these troubles. If you have a big conflict with your team or supervisors, everyone will be edgy when the event actually takes place.
A great solution that will help you and your team to handle stressful situations like these is a conflict training workshop. At PollackPeaceBuilding, training is customized for your company’s goals and needs and will tackle the systemic conflicts or issues you are dealing with.
Yes, obstacles will happen. However, if you are all prepared to handle conflict, you can deal with it with minimal damage.
The conflict resolution workshops are useful at all stages of your work. If you have some time before that big corporate event, try to fit a short workshop into everyone’s schedule. It can save everyone from many headaches in the planning stage later on.
Tip no. 3: Stay calm and stop taking it personally
Humans have the reflex of getting annoyed and offensive when attacked in some way. Keep in mind that, during the planning stage of important events, everyone is on edge. Try to fight that reflex when someone confronts you. Instead, try to understand the situation better and calmly address the issue.
It’s easy to retaliate, but what makes a good leader is the strength to remain calm and not take everything personally. Yes, it is your obligation to arrange the event and make it perfect, but it is not the end of the world if something goes wrong in planning.
If you take things from your work to heart, you’ll be more distracted and less focused. Your team needs a leader with a clear head and a great deal of focus. So, take a deep breath. Don’t rush into retaliating. Most importantly, stop thinking that every problem is a disaster without a fix.
Tip no. 4: Be very organized and detail-oriented to avoid scheduling conflicts
Scheduling conflicts happen in every business and the chances of having them with a corporate event are very high. Some of the scheduling conflicts that can happen with corporate events include:
- Overbooking. Perhaps you gave the same assignment to two people? Maybe you booked one room for two different employees during the event? Perhaps you have two speakers who are supposed to have their speech at the same time?
- Booking employees that aren’t available. This is the opposite of the first problem because in this case, you don’t have two people for one thing – you have none. By mistake, you’ve calculated in people who are sick, on vacation, or said they couldn’t come.
- Overlapping events. This is a frequent scheduling conflict in corporate event planning. Very often, these events take place over a few days. If you plan the events’ order wrong, these might overlap.
There’s hardly a person out there that hasn’t experienced some sort of scheduling conflict, at least in their personal life. We book our vacation on the same weekend as our cousin’s wedding mistake. We book our dental appointment when we’ve already scheduled to meet with a friend.
As humans, we are bound to forget things and make some mistakes. However, there’s a way to prevent this or at least minimize the odds of it happening when you’re scheduling things for your corporate event.
Let’s take a look at the ways to handle scheduling conflicts:
- Make a schedule and share it with everyone. Have a master schedule precisely for the event. Make sure everyone has access to it, and use it to schedule the available time.
- Have backups. In case someone cannot handle their task, name a backup person to take over.
- Give people a chance to alter the schedule. You can’t expect everyone to be at your back and call when you’re arranging a corporate event. Give them a chance to tell you when they are available and if necessary, request an alternate time.
Tip no. 5: Start the preparations as early as possible
Corporate events are a lot of work. If you think otherwise, you’ll be in a lot of trouble. It’s not just about booking a venue, a catering service, and telling everyone to show up. This is much more than a few phone calls and you can’t just assign the task to a few people and expect things to run smoothly.
If you want to plan a conflict-free corporate event, you need to take your time. Don’t wait until a few days before the event to start planning. All that rush will cause panic, and panic makes people frustrated and prone to conflicts!
Start planning as soon as possible. Gather your team for a meeting, set up calendars and planners to share with them, and go through the plan with everyone involved.
Tip no. 6: Have a backup plan
Unexpected problems happen in event planning and no one is at fault. You need to find a way to resolve these before they cause big conflicts.
Let’s say that you already planned everything, but the weather ruined your venue plans or the caterers cannot bring the food to the event. What do you do?
In such unexpected situations, it’s essential to have a contingency plan in place, like having a backup indoor venue or alternative catering options, to ensure the event’s success, just as you would personalize cards for every occasion to add a thoughtful touch to your celebrations. In other words, if you want to avoid the stress that comes with all this – as well as the conflicts that will undoubtedly happen as a result, you need a backup plan.
If you want to be very smart about this, have a place where you write down everything. Write down the details for the venue, travel arrangements, catering services, and everything else included in the event. Then, underneath every decision, make a backup plan. Have a backup date, a backup venue, a backup solution for food and beverages, etc.
This way, if something unexpected happens, you can deal with it before it causes a conflict.
Are you ready?
Corporate events are great for a business. Still, they are challenging to plan for. Use this list of 6 tips to reduce frustration in the planning stage, and maximize the chances of creating a flawless corporate event.
