A Report on Planning a Corporate Event

Event planning involves creating programs that address the purpose, message or impression that the clients are trying to communicate (Halsey, 2012). An event planner may work for long and non-traditional hours as he plans and executes every bit related to different meeting formats such as multi-cultural weddings, birthday parties, fashion shows, awards ceremonies, charity fundraising events or any another corporate event. To successfully develop a corporate event, one needs to have good verbal and written, multitasking, budget management and project management skills (Halsey, 2012).

Event planning involves selecting the venue and organizing for catering, production, entertainment and even the gifts (Halsey, 2012). The cost for organizing the event should also be taken into account to determine if it will be feasible to implement the event (Smit, 2012). This report covers a corporate event, in particular, a team building event for British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Company whose venue will be Hyde Park hotel, London. Apart from discussing the purpose, theme, menu, music, and activities of the event, this report presents the budget of this project.

The culture of company matters and workers want a working environment that is positive and rewarding. Clients prefer to do business with those companies that boast happiness among their employees. A company directly invests in its workplace when it takes steps to reinforce its culture. The company is only as strong as its best employees (Halsey, 2012).

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Every corporate needs to bring together people from different ethnicities, languages, and cultures (Halsey, 2012). Taking this into account, the first purpose of this event will be to break cultural barriers and give employees a general feeling that they are all one in spite of coming from different backgrounds.

Secondly, this event will be meant to motivate the employees. Team leadership and team building are inseparable. When employees become more comfortable to express their ideas and opinions, their confidence also increases. This event will be used to motivate BBC employees to undertake new challenges. Thirdly, this event will be purposed to provide employees a platform to do team building activities. Through the event, employees will interact and know their coworkers and be free to voice their opinions. The fourth purpose of this event will be to promote creativity among BBC employees. Taking employees outside an office and allowing them to experience new challenges helps them to think outside their usual routine. By working with other BBC employees, this will improve their creativity and fresh ideas which are worth qualities to be brought back to the office.

Lastly, the event will be used to get employees out of their comfort zone as well as have a great time. Team building is a memorable event which will allow every guest to participate thereby having fun. BBC has over 8,169 employees who work in London. The profits collected from this event will be used to organize for similar projects to allow every BBC employee interested in this event to also participate in the future. The event will host 500 people and selection will be based on the first 500 to purchase the participation ticket. The proposed cost for this event is £4,250.

Sometimes, when selecting the kind of a theme to use in a corporate event is easy while in other times, it may require more thought and effort to come up with an appropriate theme. The role played by a theme is a corporate event cannot be ignored. For instance, the theme brings the whole thing together. Regardless of the type of an event, the theme should embody the goals of the event. Embodying the event goals helps the theme to unify them. The theme sets the tone and allows the invitees to make right connections (Halsey, 2012). As mentioned above, coming up with a right theme is not always easy.

An event planner needs to fully understand his/her attendees to develop a theme that will appeal to their interests. Selecting a good theme that resonates with attendees helps to generate buzz about a corporate event. Therefore, a theme creates buzz (Halsey, 2012). Lastly, a theme helps to keep everyone focused. A corporate event theme sets the initial tone and constantly reminds the attendees of what the corporate is. This means that a theme should influence every component in the event space, from the decorations to food and beverages. Thus, the attendees will constantly be reminded of the event's goals each time they scan the space (Halsey, 2012). This event will have the theme, Team building.

The venue will be Hyde Park hotel, London. This venue is one of London's prestigious places surrounded by historic sites. It is an impressive centrally located venue with a wide variety of spaces to choose depending on the event needs. The venue provides an environment from spacious and impressive to the more intimate. It is located in the city of London and provides venue styles such as hall/theatre, hotel, restaurant, and bar. Toilets are within the hotel and can be easily accessed (Hyde Park Hotel, 2017). Figure 2 shows the interior design of Hyde Park hotel.

The venue will be decorated to give the guests an entertaining feeling which breaks "boredom" while working in the offices. For instance, palm trees and strings of light will be placed on existing plants of the hotel. Balloon clusters in tropical colors will be hung on different points of the ceiling. The ceiling will be lined with several lights and vines will be attached with fresh flowers. The bases of the pillars will be surrounded by coconut luminaries. If the inner design of Hyde park hotel had a pool area, this could have been a good point to place floating candles to create a stunning visual effect.

The chairs in Hyde park hotel are arranged to surround the tables although a different arrangement can be done depending on the type of an event (Hyde Park Hotel, 2017). At every set (a table and at least four chairs), there is an adequate space that can be used for walking to various parts of the room. The event participants can also use this space to carry out team building activities.

From the image shown in Figure 2, it can be seen that the table and chair arrangements have given some space for carrying out various activities, such as dancing and for this event, team building activities. The spaces are large enough to allow at least 125 people (half of the guests) to be involved in a given team building activity at the same time. For events such as team building, it is more appropriate to have a band. However, if circumstances do not allow, a DJ can replace the band. The room has enough space for either the band or a DJ.

Foods bring people together. Eating foods is one of the great ways of strengthening team bonds. Preparation of margaritas and guacamole is an example of food-related activities which although practiced in hotels, they can be done in other contexts to build the team. In this event, the team will be given the basic ingredients of preparing margaritas and guacamole. Their task will be to make the tastiest duo. This event is full of fun because for one to prepare the testiest margaritas and guacamole, he/she must master the ingredients to add to achieve this goal.

For instance, one has to figure out how to creatively combine the ingredients such as gummy bears and nacho cheese chips in good proportions. This event will hire a chef who will assess the winners. The judging criteria will be based on taste, presentation, creativity and the way the ingredients are integrated. The winning margaritas and guacamole will be served to the team members. Being part of team building activity, therefore, the menu of this event will primarily comprise of margaritas and guacamole. When talking about beverages, one cannot fail to mention delicious cocktails. Some of the drinks to be served include:

Daiquiri- Is a type of a drink made by mixing rum, ice, lemon juice and sugar. The common types of this cocktail are Banana and Strawberry Daiquiris (Rodriguez, 2012).

Bananas and strawberries which form the basis of these Daiquiris are readily available in London thus the two types will be served.

Music has the power of reaching into deeper levels of the subconscious. Team bonding can use music to ensure effective team building. Music can help the team to perform and successfully finish the things it never knew they are capable of doing. Music stimulates creativity and makes the team to be a creative risk-taker.

We cannot afford to trivialize the importance of songs in our lives. For instance, songs help to inspire and motivate the listeners. The DJ will only play songs that may inspire the team to greater levels such as "Jo'anna Gimme Hope" by Eddy Grant, "we shall overcome" by Joan Baez, "nothing's gonna stop us now" by Albert Hammond and “Yeh dosti hum nahin chodenge" by Sholey. However, it's not an obligation that these are the only songs to be played. Other motivation songs will be played for everyone's dancing pleasure and to ensure that every person is at least motivated in one way or the other. Unlike other events such as night dances, the content of motivational songs is more important than just the beats of the songs.

Therefore, there will be no need to hire professional dancers to teach the team new moves, rather the members may still remain at their seats as they enjoy the music. The guests will probably be inspired by the played songs. However, for those who have interest in dancing, there will be a dancing competition whereby everyone will vote for the person with the best dancing moves and the winner be rewarded.

The main activity in this event will be based on communication. The communication activities will involve members writing down two truths about themselves and one lie on a piece of paper. Then there will be an open conversation where every member will question each other on their three questions. Each member (guest) will try to convince others that his/her lie is indeed a truth. The member will guess the truths and lies of his fellow team members by asking them questions and being careful not to reveal his truths/lies to others. After the conversation period, the guests will sit in a circular pattern and one by one repeat each one their three statements. The team will then vote the statement they think is not true (a lie). The guest will get a point for each lie he/she guesses. At last, those with the highest points will be awarded accordingly.

Awards will also be given to volunteers who could suggest and lead any team building activity. The volunteer should formulate rules for this activity and guide the members how it is done. After completing the activity, the volunteer will be awarded a bag or a notebook depending on his/her preference.

This will be an event organized by BBC, and the attendees will only be its employees. The company will use this platform to inform employees that it values team building and educate them how interact with others to promote better teamwork in the workplace.

Budgeting is vital in the development of a project. If there is no well-planned budget, a project is likely to fall apart and be incomplete (Smit, 2012). A budget allows planners to establish the main goals of an event. For instance, some events are all-encompassing and try to achieve so much. Budgeting allows event planners to limit the number of options which may delay or add expenses to the overall costs of implementing the event (Smit, 2012). By making a budget, the project cost can be estimated. In this case, the project organizers can approximate how much can be spent on every item of the project. A budget allows the organizers to determine what proportion of the available funds can be allocated to different categories of the project (Smit, 2012). The organizers can also estimate their income against the total expenses to determine whether or not it will be economical implementing the project (Smit, 2012). The following is the proposed budget for this event:

This report provides a guide for planning a corporate event. The type of event being designed is a team building event for BBC Company. The event will be held at Hyde Park hotel, London. The theme of the event is Team Building, and the event is meant to host 500 people. The projected cost of implementing the event is £4,250. As part of team building activities, the foods will primarily comprise of margaritas and guacamole. The music will only be songs that inspire and motive the team. If other external factors do not interrupt, the company will gain a profit of £8,200.00 which can be used for hosting other such similar events in the future. There is no age limit when it comes to team building. Thus, this event can be attended by every employee irrespective of the age, income and nationality factors. By completing this report, the author has appreciated various aspects involved in corporate event planning and looks forward to being a good event planner in the future.

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