Awards evenings are a great opportunity to recognise the people who go the extra mile every day. As luck would have it, they’re also a perfect excuse to bring people together and have some well-earned fun. Ultimately, this type of event is intended to be a celebration, so everything will need to run smoothly in order for your attendees to go home feeling recognised and happy.
For anyone who needs to plan this type of occasion, the expectations involved could present you with a pretty high bar. After all, knowing how to organise an award ceremony isn’t an innate skill — it takes experience and ability to perfect. With that in mind, we’ve compiled our five biggest tips to help you deliver an event to remember. With our help, we’re sure you’ll knock it out of the park!
Why it Pays to Get Corporate Award Ceremonies Right
Corporate award ceremonies are a fantastic way to pay tribute to outstanding individual performances and celebrate the grafters and thinkers who make your business tick. Plus, while these occasions are a much-needed opportunity to put your glad rags on and bask in the positive glow of being recognised, the advantages often run much deeper. For anyone wondering how to organise an award ceremony, here are a few reasons why you should aim to make it the best live event possible:
- Foster a Powerful Working Culture: Employee satisfaction is one of the best ways to retain your most valued staff members. Studies even suggest that companies who formally acknowledge working achievements have 31% lower staff turnover than businesses who don’t. Ultimately, staging awards evenings shows people that you care and that they are valued, which goes a long way towards keeping morale and engagement higher.
- Improved PR: Social media is an undeniable feature of our digital age. When both you as a business and your individual employees share photos of corporate award ceremonies, these images can travel far and wide. For anyone outside the company, including potential customers, new talent, suppliers, this publicity could be an invaluable way of promoting your classy working culture for the better.
- Team Bonding: The social aspect of going to work is a pretty big draw for many. Awards evenings give your teams a chance to let their hair down and enjoy each other’s company. This type of corporate event has the capacity to forge strong memories of fun times that will be reflected upon until the next big occasion comes around. This sense of fun and camaraderie has the potential to reduce stress and create a fun culture that people love being a part of.
How to Organise an Award Ceremony in 5 Steps
If you’re grappling with the question of how to organise an award ceremony, you’re probably not alone! Planning a corporate event takes time, patience, flexibility, and the ability to master a sometimes dizzying array of logistical needs. We’ve put together the following exclusive insider tips to help you make it a roaring success:
1 – Create a Brief
It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately plan corporate award ceremonies unless you know your objectives. From the word go you should have a crystal clear understanding of what you want to achieve. Otherwise, the scope for losing focus and drifting off course will become magnified, which could spell serious trouble.
An additional benefit of creating a brief is that it gives you an obvious barometer of success. Furthermore, the better you understand what is required and what success looks like, the easier you should find it to sell your idea to other stakeholders and win their approval. Think of this as the roadmap that underpins all great awards evenings.
2 – Set Your Budget
Setting the budget is another essential early step in answering how to organise an award ceremony. Without this, you run the risk of running out of funds halfway through the process and leaving a trail of angry suppliers and guests in your wake. In short, the event will end up being remembered for all the wrong reasons.
The more accurate your spending forecasts, the easier it will be to keep everything on track and ensure that it all comes together as planned. Pay attention to how much you will make from ticket sales and sponsorship and make sure you include even the smallest expenses. That means staying on top of catering, venue-hire, entertainment, prop sourcing, event design, marketing…the works.
3 – Find the Right Venue
Choosing the right venue is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make when planning corporate award ceremonies. Not only will it need to have the right capacity but it will also need to match your audio visual requirements. Most importantly, it also needs to wow guests from the moment they arrive right up until the point that they stumble merrily into the night.
Venues are so much more than just interchangeable stages — they’re the backdrop to happy memories and an eye-catching selling point in their own right.
4 – Think of a Theme
The event theme is something that can completely redefine the average corporate awards ceremonies. While there’s a thing to be said for aiming to deliver a merely professional occasion, there’s a risk that it could lack the necessary oomph. Doing something adequately is fine. Doing it with uniqueness and flair is much better.
One of the key elements in how to organise an award ceremony, the theme could be anything from a sci-fi showstopper to a feast of dazzling decadence. It could be a sizzling summer affair or a festive flourish to end the year with a bang. Whatever the purpose, take time to think about how it aligns with your brief and consider ways to put a fresh spin on it for maximum effect.
Finally, make sure it seeps into every corner of your experience, from invitations and marketing material to entertainment and event design.
5 – Entertain the Talent
Although the main purpose of awards evenings is the celebration of past achievements, it’s important to have a dazzling centrepiece in mind. This could be a light show, circus act, performers on stilts…you name it! Just make sure that it lives up to the occasion. If you’re short of ideas, a DJ and dance floor are perennial favourites.
Also worth considering are smaller factors, such as the choice of music for when people collect their accolades. Some of this will be determined by your choice of venue, making it all the more necessary to check AV capabilities along the way.
Choose ConnectIn Events For Your Next Great Corporate Award Ceremonies
While awards evenings might look easily achievable when you’re in the thick of the action, don’t be fooled! An incredible amount of time, patience, and planning goes into the delivery of an elite live experience. Therefore, if you want to stage a spectacle that truly celebrates the efforts of your most valued individuals, it’s vital to work with an events company that knows the ropes.
As the team behind the hugely successful ‘I Love MCR’ awards, ConnectIn Events has proven expertise in planning occasions on a vast scale. We’ve worked with all kinds of businesses over the years, but our ethos stays the same. We’re a friendly team that makes your objectives the only barometer of success, and we have the talent to meet even the loftiest expectations.
Just tell us about your plans, limitations, and budget and we’ll make sure that every detail is taken care of.
To find out more, get in touch with a member of the team today.
