I’m often involved in discussions about employee engagement and how to get the best out of people at work e.g. “I have a great team but I want them to be more involved, more innovative, have more say, take more initiative, be more proactive.” A question I like to ask is “When was the last time you got your people together to talk about the business?” As employers or managers, you know that making time to work on the business is vital, but hard to achieve, and it is equally so for your employees.

A staff conference can be a very valuable way of creating the space and time you need to involve your people in the future of your business. It takes people out of the normal environment and puts them into a situation where they can work together, share ideas, learn new skills and plan for the future, without the normal distractions of the office.

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If you are responsible for planning your next staff conference here are five tips to make sure that your event is a success:

1. Choose an inspiring theme.
This not only helps you to plan the agenda but also gives people something to look forward to. Make it inspiring e.g. not just a planning day but “Setting the Agenda for 2020”

2. Select a good venue.
Make sure it is somewhere that has a good outlook and natural light, where there is plenty of room to move around and, road test the food and service. Food and comfort is important to people’s enjoyment of your event. Check the details and don’t leave anything to chance.

3. Structure the day.
Consider such factors as fatigue and variety when you are putting your program together e.g. don’t put two heavy technical sessions back to back. Break them up with something like a group activity in between.

4. Engage and involve.
People will remember more what they did than what you told them so ensure that you create plenty of opportunities for getting involved such as: Q&A sessions; brainstorming; team building activities; creative tasks.

5. Start strong, finish positively.
Kick the day off with an uplifting address from the leader to introduce the theme of the conference and how that fits in with the vision and values of the business and its people. And then close the conference with a summary at the end. Make sure you start and finish on time. No one will thank you for running over.