It might be the summer BBQ in the park, a virtual trivia event with WFH employees, or a holiday party at a swanky club, but every company makes the same mistakes with the company party. We wont hit you with every mistake possible – like when you created a logjam at the buffet line – but a few big ones crop up over and over again.
Here are the top 5 mistakes every company makes when throwing a company morale or team-building event.
5) Give Up the Workday
Maybe its human nature to think that more people will show up if you do your company party at night, or even on a Saturday, but its also wrong (and normally MORE expensive).
Throwing a company party after work during the weekday or on a Saturday does 2 bad things:
i) It puts you in competition with everyone else’s schedule. Now someone has to choose between taking the kid to soccer practice or dance class, or coming to the party. Hint – the kids normally win.
ii) You are showing you won’t give up a part of the workday to make sure your employees have a good time.
Good news…your best attendance is going to be at lunch AT WORK – not dinner somewhere else no one has ever been – because during the work day you know where everyone should be! If you think playing at work sets a bad example, well there are about a 100 research papers that show you’re wrong.
If your company is so busy and slammed that you cant give up 3 hours of a workday as a reward for your employees without things falling to pieces, you might have bigger problems on your hand than a morale event, because your morale probably already sucks.
4) The 50% rule –
How many times have we seen a company get cold feet and bail on a party because only 40% of the office has RSVP’d?
A lot.
First off ..RSVP’s don’t matter – You can “save the date” into oblivion – what matters is how you communicate the 3 days before, and the day of the event. Beyond that your evite RSVP list normally isn’t worth a hill of beans, both for people who say they are coming AND people who don’t respond (because they never respond).
If you have a small team of 20 recruiters spread out across the country and you are trying to run a virtual event and only 5 people say they can make it…yeah, maybe you should change the date and time.
But if you have a large group – 40-50% attendance is actually GOOD! Over 50% is great!
If your company doesn’t have a history of running virtual parties, take 40% as a win, because you need to get some momentum going.
The best thing you can do to create momentum is to run a fun party, and have the 50% that were there tell the 50% that didn’t show up that it was a good time. So maybe next time you’ll get to 60%.
You’re never going to find a time when 90% of your people can make it, or a perfect central location that works for everyone’s commute or everyone’s schedule.
We have run parties INSIDE company headquarters and people have stayed in their offices and worked.
And guess what, if they are skipping the party because they want to (not because they have to), you probably don’t want them at the party anyway!
Optimize your party date and time for your company, but realize 90% attendance is a total made up dream. It’s better to make 50% of your people happy than not run any party at all — or constantly delay and re-schedule — searching for the perfect setting that doesn’t actually exist.
3) Tooo Many Teams!
So you’ve gone a step further than most: You’re gonna throw the party from 2-4pm during work, and you’re not gonna freak out when only half the office RSVP’s – And you’ve decided to add an activity!
Smart move! Having a game or activity will actually make sure MORE people attend instead of just standing around the same veggie tray — with that weird ranch dressing in the middle — having the same conversations they always have.
If you are going to have a shared activity or team-building event, try and hire a pro.
But ok, ok you still think you have to do it all on your own, and stress about the company party while others enjoy themselves.
So please…don’t make too many teams!
We’re not sure what it is: Pride, vanity, wanting things to just feel “bigger,” but every company we have ever met has too many teams and wants more and more of them. Maybe the boss set a 14 team quota?
Whether its trivia, a scavenger hunt, or some kind of simple bar Olympics…having less teams with MORE PEOPLE is ALWAYS better.
You’ve got 54 people for the company trivia party? DO NOT do 18 teams of 3. It will slow the whole event down, and as soon as someone leaves early (which they will) or gets disconnected virtually, the rest of the remaining team is bummed out AND short handed.
You don’t want teams that feel incomplete because it feels like people are “missing.”
Focusing on the amount of teams at your event is like counting how many people show up to your birthday party or liked your post on Instagram: It might make you feel good in the moment but it doesn’t matter very much in the long run.
As an example: With 54 employees, do 9 teams of 6 people. The experience will be much more fun, and there will be much less pressure in social situations if everyone in the event doesn’t already know each other.
(Forming the teams is a whole different story for a different day. Again: this is why you hire a pro that isn’t running a cookie cutter event and actually cares about team formation.)
Having employees who have never met and interacted have a meaningful conversation and learn more about each other should be the #1 goal of any company party. Don’t worry about the number of attendees or the number of teams.
2) Stop With the Bribes!
I gotta get more people to the company party – What do I do?
Bribe ’em!
Door prizes, gift cards, 1st place gets money…Sometimes first place even gets a day off work which is…interesting….
Don’t get us wrong — Prizes are awesome — Trophies that sit in the office are cool and important to memorialize your event (and encourage more people to come to the next one).
But if your only draw to the company party is that you’re gonna win some money, you often create more problems than you solve.
First: You can end up with people that only care about…money! They don’t care about your experience or meeting other employees. They care about winning.
Second: You have just upped the competitive vibe of the party 10 fold. Your casual trivia game or 3 legged race just got a heck of a lot more serious, and you will now get 20x the questions about rules and fairness.
We were once in the middle of a company field day and the boss (after a couple — or 7 — beers) casually mentioned that he wanted to give out a thousand bucks (cash) to the winning team, and announce it right then, because everyone was having so much fun.
Baaaaaaaaad idea.
We talked him out of it on the spot. If he wanted to do that on his own after the event was over, no problem, he’s the boss. If you want to see an event go downhill real fast, start talking about money and cash.
Again – Have prizes – Announce them at the END OF THE EVENT – don’t use them as a bribe at the beginning of the event to try and juice your attendance numbers.
There is a much better way to get people engaged with a party anyway…start by asking:
1) Where is the Boss ?
Listen, we get it: You’re an important manager or even the CEO. You are busy as hell and you don’t have time to “goof off.” But unless you coming to an event causes massive security concerns because your last name rhymes with Bezos…come to the damn party.
And when you come to the party, virtual or otherwise, don’t be a chuckle-head. Don’t show up for 5 minutes on Zoom, thank everyone for how awesome they are and then run out the (virtual) door. Don’t shake hands for 20 minutes at the BBQ and then disappear when no one is looking.
Bosses invest so much money in “wellness,“ but most we’ve seen won’t invest their TIME in just showing up and hanging out.
You want to run a successful company party? Have the boss send out a personal invite and say they are actually GOING to the party and they want others to JOIN them.
That will actually get people to come, instead of bribing them.
If the boss doesn’t care enough to go to the party and connect with employees, why should anyone else?
And once you get the boss there, don’t embarrass them!
Many companies confuse humor with humiliation.
Don’t stick them in a “dunk tank,” put them in embarrassing outfits, or make them sing (if they cant actually sing and don’t want to sing).
Because then they will stop showing up to the company party!
Stop bribing people and have the boss start inviting people to hang out. Save your bribes, invest your time.
So there are your top 5 most common mistakes for the good old company party. You can make this all a lot simpler…just hire a pro. Don’t force the HR department to run a party and also worry about the company health-care plan. That might be why people weren’t coming to the party in the first place.
Avoid these simple traps, get the boss on board, and don’t forget to have fun.