But it’s a wasted opportunity if you get people together and then just share a boring PowerPoint.

According to Eventify, 36% of managers are finding it challenging to convince people to attend events in person.

So what can internal communicators do to make sure an in-person event is valuable? 

We’re working with clients on fresh ways to excite, motivate and involve employees more, building a better sense of collaboration and shared purpose, here’s our top tips:

1. Make turning up worth their while. That means not just announcing the event is happening, but explaining what you’ll individually get out of it by attending – and what you’ll miss out on if you don’t.
2. Design the event around conversation and networking. If you’re going to have people sitting around listening to presentations the entire time, you can bet you’ll hear some “this could have been a Teams call” grumblings.
3. Bring in moments for interaction, connection and even fun.

After years of virtual interactions, in-person events are your chance to remind employees of the value and enjoyment in authentic human connection.

We’ve helped clients by:

• Creating and running a giant hackathon as part of a company conference to involve colleagues in generating business innovation ideas for a European manufacturing firm
• Developed our own multi-events app. This was used by a UK financial services firm for their annual awards. Social features for event networking and polls, interactions, and post-event feedback made our JuICe events app a powerful communication and engagement tool
• Refreshed regular town halls, roadshows and leadership sessions. Polls, quizzes, animation, and even a digital social wall, which updated in real-time as people uploaded picture pledges from a multi-site road show
• Created an immersive video wall to help shape a new narrative with leadership, sparking discussion as well as engagement
• Planning and delivery of a week-long event across multiple time zones to engage colleagues with a new ‘best of us’ showcase. It offered regional live, in-person sessions, bite-sized ‘Ted Talk-style’ pre-recorded sessions, pre-event, event and post-event communications and assets, and a daily email newsletter round-up.