Planning a work event - help?!

[Cocacolathanks]

Hello Mumsnet

I have only been working at my new job for 3 months. Along with 9 other people, I have been asked to plan a work event. To be frank, I’ve never even planned a birthday party so this is new territory for me and I was hoping for some nice ideas.

The gist is that it’s a “networking” event for a group of 50-60 people who have been working from home since 2020. Some have been with the company for many years, others joined recently like myself.

There is no strict schedule or rules but ideally there will be some presentations/speakers on relevant topics, an icebreaker or game, and something involving the 10 team leaders.

Any ideas for presentation topics? I was thinking something to do with the shift from WFH/Office or maybe work/life balance.

No idea how to include team leaders. Maybe a funny facts session? I am cringing as I type 😅

Also no idea for icebreakers but I am leaning towards something that gets people walking around the room rather than a typical “give a fun fact” sort of thing.

Please help Mumsnet! Any tips, advice or suggestions would be great. I have about 1 month to plan the event so not a lot of time.

thank you ❤️

It's difficult to say without knowing a few more facts.

Is there a budget?

Are you expected to provide refreshments ?

If you can I think in your position I would buy some very easy games to play something straightforward but that people can join in with so things like giant Jenga, connect four , I've not seen them for a while now but used to be able to get board games that were big enough to stand on so you would be the counter other people throw dice things like snakes and ladders and Ludo.

Gently encourage people to play them don't force anybody or make them feel bad for not wanting to join in

If you lots joining in you could have a scoreboard and award 5 points for winner 3 for second place and 1 for 3rd place and then totally up at the end of the day and give out a prize.

Please help Mumsnet! Any tips, advice or suggestions would be great. I have about 1 month to plan the event so not a lot of time.

Oh, good, so still time to resign, then? 😉

The board games idea from PP is a good one.

Our leadership planned an ice-breaker for when we had our first day in the office after about 19 months. Not sure if you have a budget, but they got in some pizza, beer, and wine for after the speakers. The ice-breaker didn't happen because they realised everyone was networking organically. Not even the leadership really wanted to do the ice-breaker. "Add alcohol and leave them to it" has become a repeated, winning formula.

If it involves walking around the room make sure that there isn't anyone with disabilities.

Get everyone to introduce themselves so name, role, what they've enjoyed/not enjoyed about wfh. Ask them what their fave box set /binge watch /guilty viewing pleasure has been.

There is no budget - canteen on site, team leaders are chipping in for snacks, everything else is basically work with what we have.

the point of the event is to network but we also have to arrange some presentations/speeches. For example, last year in a similar event they had a presentation about transferable skills from a person who used to work in the circus! Lol some interesting stuff there.

Also re alcohol we have a lot of people who won’t be drinking due to personal/religious reasons so there won’t be any alcohol. It’s a daytime event really.

Two lies and a truth

Depends how worky it should be, we had one with about 30- 40 people where we were asked to speak to as many people as possible in 20 mins, finding out what their top 3 priorities were, and to see if there were areas we could collaborate. We even had a print out list with everyone's names on.

I’m also looking for topics that could be spoken about. For example a lot of us have officially gone back to working in the office after being home based throughout covid, so someone suggested a “back to office” refresher talk with advice, tips, etc.

anything else you can think of?

someone else suggested one aimed at people with caring responsibilities/parents where we discuss how to achieve a work life balance with family responsibilities

Baby photos of the senior management team and they get a prize for the most they get right?

Quiz about the company after the presentations?

We used to have a lot of these and I always thought they were a bit cringy - but there is one ice-breaker that I remember that was quite fun. It involved splitting into pairs. Each pair had a pile of different shaped and coloured blocks in front of them and a picture of something made with the blocks. One person was blindfolded and the other had to guide them to build the correct construction with the blocks - using the picture as a guide. The winner was the team who had the most accurate construction in the quickest time. It could be adapted to be a drawing with coloured pens, or to use lego, or maybe even to have a team of builders and just one person giving the orders. Prizes for games are always a good idea, and it is important to have a good mixture of different types of games and quizzes to ensure that everyone has a chance at winning something, as we all have different strengths. I would avoid having too much that involves physical strength or mobility though... as it can be very discriminatory against people with either actual disabilities or who are (for instance) just too fat or too old to get up and down from the floor or to run or jump around (like me!)

I do three things quite a lot .. I use this site, lots of good ideas

www.businessballs.com/team-management/team-building-games-training-ideas-and-tips/

Ah some great icebreaker ideas coming in - thank u! Very helpful I especially like some of the group work ideas.

hoping you wise people can also think of some topics for speakers? What would YOU like to hear someone talk about at a work event?

That's hard to say without knowing what the work is.
But if a manager has worked their way up from the shop floor to high ranking ( without been a git and stomping on others) that could be enlightening / inspiring.
If its a old business, how and why it was established

If the building has history some may like that .

Do you have a diverse work place?

I had some ESOL students doing a qualification on the side and we made a recipe book, each student brought one recipe from their culture / home country.

If you ask in advance so they arrive with a recipe you could make that into an ice breaker and depending on time and photocopying they could all leave with a recipe book, or just swap recipes as an ice breaker.

Or a task master type 'bring a something that represents you'.

An interesting ice breaker is 'If you were a ... what would you be and why?' You can do this with frozen food, fruit, animals anything.

Get some post it notes and ask them to put one thing that would make the workplace or the work better for each person - it could be things like arriving 10 mins late because of public transport, having better / different food in the canteen to, well whatever. You then have a resource you can feed back to management.

A 'micro teach' so people have 10 mins to teach the group to do something, it could be work related or related to home life.

We did this on one of my teaching courses and there were some really good things presented eg how to keep chickens, how to tell if an ECG is abnormal, teaching sex education in a prison, how to cook something.

What's your industry? Do you have budget for inspirational speakers or do you need the staff to speak?

Mental health in the workplace is quite an important topic these days

I work in a primary school so these might not be appropriate! However when I meet new classes I tend to play:
2 truths and a lie - say 3 things about yourself, 2 true and 1 lie, and guess which is the lie.
Body rock paper scissors - find a partner, play rock paper scissors (arms out for scissors, flat star shape for paper and squat down for rock) losers go to one side, winners find another partner and play again. Repeat until you get a winner.
Problem solving tasks to do in groups eg how to cross the river with a fox, chicken and grain. There are loads online.
Bingo - children answer questions about themselves in the squares (fav food, siblings, hobbies etc) and then have to go around and try to find someone who has the same answers as them.
If we're having training we sometimes use kahoot which is an online quiz but it can be about anything so could be more general knowledge. After each question you can see who is in the top 5 (you get marks for correct answer and speed.) It can get quite competitive.
Not sure about speakers. We had someone talking about positivity in the work place who was really funny but also had interesting points to make. I'd be interested in work/life balance and things specific to improving teaching. I guess it depends on the work as to what would be appropriate but you want someone engaging.

if it helps, there’s a strong similarity to the U.K. civil service, but it’s not in the UK. However, it is made up of people mostly from the U.K. (all different backgrounds, ethnicities, religions of course).

so you could use the civil service as a blueprint for suggestions

just going through some of the new suggestions and some great stuff here!!

id be especially interested in hearing more about the positivity talk @ExhaustedPigeon was it like tongue in cheek humour? Toxic positivity vs realistic positivity? Seems like a very interesting topic so thank you for sharing that

We recently had a speaker who did a whole thing about happiness and contentment etc. He is called Andy Cope (Dr Happy - has an actual doctorate in it).

He was very entertaining, not cringey, and had clearly done a fair bit of research about our business/industry to tailor the Talk to us.

I would get the team leaders engaged in giving you ideas for things to discuss, that will resonate in their teams, their part of the business, that collectively give the other teams a reasonable view of the big picture.

let's face it, you don't want a whole day of party games, maximum an opening icebreaker and something amusing for the graveyard slot immediately after lunch, but that's all. The rest of the time should be interesting topics, maybe a brainstorm for some people-related improvements along the lines of "What would make XXX Company a great place to work? with a poll at the end.

If there isn't enough substance to the day, a lot of people will be put off and find the event trivialising and cringeworthy

Definitely agree with making the event as Inclusive as possible. You could ask the team leaders to give you any broad indication of Reasonable Adjustments and hence preferences, in their teams (ideally anonymised, for dignity and privacy), that you need to build into your plans.

For example staff with autism/ADHD will appreciate a reasonably relaxed pace of events, so they don't get overwhelmed (this is based on people in my own team and knowing what they've told me, before I get told off for stereotyping, it's just an example).

Just bumping the thread whilst I read the suggestions! :)