Organising a company seminar is a genuine challenge. It raises a great many questions and, above all, demands careful organisation. The options are varied — a restaurant outing, a canoeing seminar, a games evening, a walk through a vineyard — and it is that abundance of possibilities that makes a company seminar so difficult to organise.
Here is our step-by-step guide.
1. Define the objective
The theme and the whole organisation of the seminar depend on what is at stake: who are you inviting, and what for?
Is it a working seminar, where results have to be concrete? An event dedicated to cohesion (team building), intended to bring colleagues closer and build connection? A seminar to retain contacts or investors? A study trip intended for people to learn from one another?
Any theme you come up with will map onto one of those. You will need to attach each idea to a particular objective and, conversely, to find ideas for each purpose.
If the aim is to build cohesion within the group, a day at Disneyland Paris or a rafting trip in the Ardèche gorges suits well.
If the aim is instead to get real work done, you are better off hiring an engaging workspace such as a coworking space, or a large Provençal farmhouse with a long table and smaller spaces for activities and breakout meetings.
For study days, focus on the venue that will host everyone and on the surrounding activities — catering, entertainment in the evening — so that people want to engage with the work itself, which will occupy part of their day, and find the idea of a working trip appealing.
Seminars with mixed themes, combining work and relaxation, need both somewhere to relax — a pool, a terrace — and somewhere to work, meaning at least a large table around which a meeting can be held.
Small-group brainstorming sessions are often appreciated by colleagues.
Many venues that regularly host company seminars, theme parks among them, have rooms set aside specifically for working. If you choose to spend several days in the Verdon gorges, check that a practical space is available for working together in good conditions: heated, with enough chairs, good lighting and, if possible, a projector — which you can bring yourself if there is none.
Sometimes a simple wooden table does the job.
2. Budget the event
As with any event, the seminar needs a budget. It tells you what you have to work with and how far you can go. Two main factors set it:
- the company’s internal constraints (we would all like a week in the Dominican Republic, but it is not always possible);
- the constraints of the seminar itself (number of guests, duration, travel).
The means are generally insufficient for the seminar of your dreams, which is why you will need several levers to improve both the organisation and the quality of the event. The first step is to budget the seminar as early as possible, so that you can find good deals for your trip or your day, and so that you can try to move the figure over time — by building a case showing that releasing another 1,000 euros would be a real asset to the event and to the company.
The second step is to organise as well as you can within the amount you have. It is better to negotiate the price of a hotel night or a wine tasting than to disappoint everyone and risk missing the real point of the seminar. If you are working on a cohesion seminar and your budget only covers an hour of canoeing for everyone, the objective will not be met, because cohesion does not take hold in so little time.
Find the right balance between budget and quality: a good service will satisfy most attendees.
In that case, demonstrate it to the department concerned and to your management, and negotiate with the suppliers offering the service. You will most likely arrive at a satisfactory middle ground that gives attendees a rich experience without emptying your company’s pockets.
3. Choose a date
You need to choose a date and communicate it to every attendee as early as possible, so they can plan. That maximises attendance. Be careful to choose dates when attendees are likely to be available:
- avoid July, August and December
- avoid the dates immediately before or after a long weekend
- avoid school holidays
- avoid dates when major events are scheduled, a football match for instance.
Our advice: send a save the date before you even have all the information. It lets you “block” the date.
4. Organise every detail, fill the gaps, and run a mental rehearsal
A seminar full of colleagues in good spirits is like a playground: everyone is talking, and everyone constantly needs something — food, drink, toilets, signal.
Avoid friction by anticipating every small issue. Find the suppliers who will work on the event early, after a thorough comparison, then send them a general brief describing your expectations and the atmosphere you want, along with an individual brief telling each of them exactly what you expect from them.
Brief your suppliers.
Do you expect dinner to finish late one evening? Say so. Do some colleagues have particular dietary requirements? Tell them. Are you working with people with healthy appetites? Plan the portions accordingly.
Once suppliers are found, booked and briefed, give them your contact details and those of a deputy who will assist you on the day. Then rehearse mentally through each event of the day, in order to spot a gap in the schedule, a shortcoming in the organisation, or conversely a moment where too much is happening at once. Line everything up so as to smooth the schedule without creating stress and without unsettling colleagues on the day.
Remember that attendees are generally very sensitive to how an event is organised, particularly one lasting several days.
5. Choose themes and activities carefully
Choosing a theme may seem superfluous, but it is the theme that ends up guiding the organisation and the shape of the event. If you choose a winter seminar in the mountains, you get open fires, ski runs, fondue evenings and eggnog.
A seminar dedicated to art might take place in Paris, Amsterdam or London, and offer museum visits, a culture quiz, and a stay in a hotel or guesthouse chosen along the same lines.
Choose a theme that lets you create and plan content for the whole duration of the trip.
On activities, it is usually good practice to offer a physical or sporting activity with several levels of difficulty, or one that can easily be swapped for something gentler if some attendees do not want or are not able to take part.
Pulling on a rope should be within everyone’s reach.
Choose something accessible to everyone, to maximise participation and bring teams together: laser tag, rafting, a boxing class. For building team spirit, sport provides a useful shot of adrenaline that pushes each person to go further for their team.
For less sporting teams, consider the escape game or a treasure hunt, which bring people together around a shared goal. There are many effective team-building activities — follow the link for our list of those that have proved themselves. For the more adventurous, axe-throwing will raise a laugh, and a bootcamp will test everyone and encourage solidarity.
6. Build a reverse schedule
That mental rehearsal will help you build the reverse schedule for the event, telling you what has to be done at one month out, 10 days out, and so on, to be sure your organisation is sound.
It is easy to forget to pay a deposit to a supplier, or to confirm a crucial detail, once you are caught up in other obligations. A reverse schedule is a small amount of extra work relative to what it saves you.
7. Send everyone a schedule
As with the supplier briefs, every attendee should receive a schedule: colleagues so they know how the seminar will run, and guests such as speakers and guides so they know the shape of the day and what is expected of them.
Everyone can then ask you questions and discuss the organisation with you. It gives them clarity, and may also raise issues you had not thought of.
You will never over-communicate about the event. Neither your colleagues nor any other attendee will ever object to too much information — quite the opposite.
8. Put sensible tools in place, for the seminar and afterwards
Set up everyone’s address in your work messaging system and, if needed, create a dedicated group with all the confirmed attendees, so that communicating once you are there is easy: a colleague lost on the road, something forgotten, or photographs shared as they happen.
Along the same lines, set a specific hashtag that colleagues can use when they publish a photograph. It makes those pictures easier to find afterwards when you write up the event, and it lets everyone look back on the time spent together.
A number of companies and startups exist to make these moments distinctive and to help companies put strong logistics in place. WeChain is one of them, building a social network made for events.
Each guest can publish photographs of the event, and those are relayed live according to the organising company’s wishes. Likes, shares and comments are all available, as on any social network, except that the content is intended exclusively for attendees: it is private and reachable only by guests.
Last but not least: a live display of those posts on a large screen, so that everyone takes part and can laugh and relax together.
Slack, the internal messaging tool built for companies, lets you talk to one another, share information, photographs and polls, and create channels for each working group or activity.
9. The day after, and the week after, review the event
Did people enjoy the seminar? What were its weaknesses and its gaps? Send every attendee a satisfaction survey to find out what they liked, what they did not, and whether the exercise succeeded. Thank them for their time and attention and, if you can, send them photographs of the seminar’s best moments.
In conclusion, organising a company seminar need not be a tedious task.
The key to a successful seminar is knowing why you are running it, and holding to the conditions that objective requires. A cohesion seminar will not resemble a study seminar, and everyone needs to understand why they are there.
Budgeting remains a key moment in the organisation, telling you your possibilities and your limits on each line. The other essential condition for a seminar worth the name is communication: before, during and after. Finally, beyond the organisation such an event demands, the sensible tools and the schedules, remember above all to enjoy the time with colleagues — because that, after all, is the whole point of a company seminar.