Start Shaping Your Corporate Event by Defining Its Core Objectives

Prior to crafting your corporate event agenda, you need to outline the fundamental goals of your event. Successful corporate event planners start with strategy, including specific desired outcomes, such as improving collaboration, training, increasing sales, etc., and then establish event-specific objectives. Listing ideal behavioral outcomes is also crucial to setting up purposeful event goals—what do you want your attendees to think, feel, and do in response to your event?

The content architecture of your event, including its themes and format, should be directly tied to its core objectives. Understanding your audience and their interests will help you choose goals that will enhance their experience. A corporate event management agency can help you ensure your core objectives are straightforward and realistic so that you can measure success after the event accurately.

Set Overarching Event Goals

To ensure your corporate event achieves the ROI you’re looking for, get specific about your event goals and how they will relate to desired outcomes. Define event-specific goals that complement the key initiatives you’re looking to move the needle on. Corporate events are powerful tools to bring your people together in a meaningful way that simply can’t be replicated on a screen or phone. Some common goals include: 

Networking 

Sounds simple enough, but in today’s fragmented work environments, many organizations only get one opportunity per year to gather their entire teams in person and meaningfully develop professional relationships. Some examples of activities to help foster that throughout the event include:

• Small group exercises with intentionally diverse teams
• “Ask Me” ribbons or buttons to include on name badges 
• Workshops with collaborative elements
• Whitespace for organic conversation

Collaboration

Fostering teamwork during an event impacts the day-to-day work lives of attendees, increasing productivity and camaraderie at the workplace. Some components that corporate events feature to encourage collaboration are: 

• Team-building exercises with problem-solving elements
• Creative group projects, such as design or building challenges
• Team-based trivia about the company’s history, values, and fun facts
• Role reversal exercises to help coworkers understand each other's job 
• Group community service projects
• Experiential activations that require more than one person

You know your audience best and their willingness to interact with one another. Intentionally design activities that lean into your culture and goals. 

Training 

Whether launching a new product, training new employees, or rolling out new policies or procedures, training is often a key component of corporate meetings or events.

Some examples of activities that corporate events include to facilitate training are:

• Mentorship pairings
• Panel discussions
• Hands-on workshops
• Simulation exercises with role-playing scenarios
• Augmenting presentations with video and animation
• Small group Q&A

Outline Desired Behavioral Outcomes

In addition to overarching event goals, corporate events should consider ideal behavioral outcomes—think about what you want your attendees to think, feel, and do.

Think

How do you want to change your attendees’ thinking? Content presented onsite should get them to consider how they want to change or reinforce the existing behavior.

Survey attendees before your event to get a baseline of their existing thinking, where their heads are on certain subjects, and how you want to present content to affect that. 

Feel

Some sentiments companies want their event’s attendees to feel in response to their event are:

• Motivated and Empowered – Your content, as well as peer interactions, should energize and motivate attendees.
• Connected – After interacting with other teams, participants should feel a sense of belonging and connection to their colleagues, your brand, and values.
• Appreciated – Celebrate your people and their accomplishments by making attendees feel valued and recognized for their contributions.
• Shared Purpose - Are they on the same page with where you're going? Your event is a critical opportunity to reinforce this. 

By fostering feelings of motivation, connection, and appreciation among attendees, you will create a positive and impactful corporate event experience that drives engagement.

Do

You’ve made a significant investment in your experience, so it’s important that you clearly outline expected behaviors and what you’re asking employees to do as an outcome of your event.

• Implement New Methods – Attendees should be eager to apply newly learned techniques and insights in their daily work to improve performance, albeit new policies, tactics, procedures, etc. 
• Engage in Networking – Participants should actively seek out and engage with colleagues and leaders during breaks and networking sessions to build relationships.
• Provide Feedback – Attendees should be encouraged to share their thoughts and feedback on the event and ongoing projects or initiatives, fostering a culture of open communication.

You will inform, inspire, and engage attendees with purposeful event planning focusing on desired behavioral outcomes. Doing so will lead to lasting impacts on the organization, ranging from increased business output to stronger team collaboration.

Be Intentional With Your Content Architecture

The content architecture of your event should fuel the goals you established above. Think about how your content will be organized, shared, and linked together. Solidify the following aspects of your content strategy to make sure your messages are effectively heard.

Themes

Successful event experiences have a primary theme that brings the event’s goals to life. Often, it helps to establish sub-themes for individual sessions or days, especially if it is a multiple-day event, to encourage deeper exploration.

A great theme offers many benefits. It can add an element of excitement, build community, and, of course, reinforce your brand in a unique experience for your attendees. Beyond its branding and communication benefits, a creative theme can foster innovation and significantly improve attendee engagement. By focusing on bringing that theme to life throughout the experience design, you reinforce the importance of your strategic messages with simplicity and memorability. 

Session Types and Formats

Engaging corporate events feature sessions with unique formats that can appeal to varying interests and learning styles. Some examples of standard session formats for a corporate event are:

• Keynote Presentations – High-level presentations that set the tone and inspire attendees. This is an excellent format for establishing the primary themes and goals before breaking them down in subsequent sessions.
• Workshops – Hands-on, interactive sessions that allow for skill development. This setting is excellent for training individuals or increasing camaraderie if the workshops are collaborative.
• Panels – Discussions with industry experts or internal subject matter experts providing varied perspectives on relevant topics. This session style is a great setting for sharing best practices in a candid conversation.
• Breakout Rooms – Smaller, focused discussions that cater to specific interests or needs. This type of session should bring team members closer together and build collaborative skills.

Figuring out what session type will complement each of your core objectives will help you achieve optimal results.

Cater to Your Audience

Knowing your audience is required to design an experience that elevates your event. Even if your business gathering is catering to internal employees, knowing what they care about is crucial. 

Surveying your audience before your event will help you better understand what they want to learn and, just as importantly, how they want to learn and connect with others. In addition to tailoring the content, insights into demographics should influence the timing and structure of the event’s activities. 

It’s also essential to consider attendees' individualized needs. For example, while some people thrive in high-energy sessions, others need time for reflection. Working with an experienced event planning team will ensure you accommodate the majority of attendee’s schedules, preferences, and learning styles, enhancing overall participation and satisfaction. 

Use Your Objectives to Plan the Right Corporate Event Agenda

After clearly defining the core objectives of your event and brainstorming how the content architecture can support them, it will be easier to create a successful corporate event agenda. Keep desired outcomes in mind while planning sessions to enhance the attendee experience and achieve your goals. 

Not sure where to start? We got you. We’ve helped hundreds of brands design the right experience for their goals and audiences, whether making small optimizations or completely reimagining your experience. 

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