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One of the hardest hit industries and one of the first to be affected even before lockdown began is forecasted to be one of the last to reignite. When it does it will certainly burn a different flame, but how and when will live corporate events flourish once again?
We know the importance of live interaction as humans and we understand that social interaction is vital to building business and personal relationships, this is why live events have grown in investment over the past century.
Businesses have always used events to position themselves in their marketplace, to magnify an important message to their public, to strengthen their brand and to build a positive company culture with no prejudice. Companies that understand what a great event can do and invest well – flourish, whilst others who have the attitude of, ‘it’s just expense’ and ‘it’s a jolly we can do without’ will drop to the way side and at times like this you wouldn't want to be in the latter!
So we’re now faced with a brand new, yet quite exciting challenge – How do we create the same impact, preach the same message and promote the same company culture, yet keep attendees as safe as physically possible…..the biggest key word here is POSSIBLE! Because anything is possible!
Conference and meeting venues are being given guidance of the safety measures to take to ensure guests can have peace of mind they will be safe during their time there. It’s understood that for some, one-way route systems around the venues will be in place, that hygiene protocol has been increased in all areas with sanitation stations being made publicly available and of course the style of catering is likely to change. This will be more individually portioned food, specifically wrapped to take away instead of the traditional restaurant and group finger buffets of the past, plus meeting room capacities will drop to something like half to a third of what they would have been.
Event service providers will follow suit and adhere to the guidelines of the venues, with extra care being taken to ensure all equipment is sanitised before its delivered onsite and once again on removal.
A key part of live events is bringing a team together to hear a message and discuss it at the same time. Asking any questions and to taking time to understand what will be expected of them moving forward.
Sometimes, it is important to make the bond between team members stronger which may ask for Team Building Activities to be implemented into the schedule. Team building can certainly still be done in the new normal.
There are team building development gurus who thrive on solving the problem of effective teamwork at a distance. It is expected that team building may have a more digital approach, but digital is the future so why not adapt?
We picture small groups with stations at a safe distance from one another, all equipped with a tablet, this one room creates one team, so you may have other same set up in other rooms. The teams are then given information but must find ways of communicating at a distance to solve the problem.
There are so many options that can be done for this style of challenge including virtual escape rooms and negotiation challenges which can still be fun, testing and we believe will be a representation of how a business team will work in the short term future.
Gala dinners and parties will certainly be an area heavily affected. Gone will be the days of 10 – 12 people around a 6ft round table in a room of 300 others. It is not yet clear the implications in this area, but as industry professionals we will keep searching for answers and keep you right up to date through our blogs.
However….taking all the above into consideration, what its really going to take to reignite the events industry is confidence!...............Confidence from knowing there’s a vaccine, confidence from the government and health specialists telling us positive news and most of all our own will as a nation to not let this situation stop us.
We’re confident at EventServiceCheck.com we can deliver in a different yet vibrant event world