You’re an in-house comms or HR professional and you’ve been tasked with putting together the next company event for your people. You’ve taken the brief from your CEO, understood the vision, said yes to all the great ideas from the team and have plenty of ideas of your own. You’re excited right? But that initial excitement has very quickly turned to dread and anxiety. You’re having a minor freak out aren’t you? You need an external events agency.
Let’s just pause for a moment. You know that you’re capable of putting this event together, your boss certainly knows you’re capable of it, and we know you are too. But errr, hello what about the day job!?! Just because you can do something it doesn’t mean you should. It’s all too common where people in your position are trusted with running an event on top of their already very busy day jobs.
Producing an event is all consuming, it’s time sensitive and it’s added pressure. On top of your existing workload all of that might just push you over the edge. So it’s time to bring in some professional partners to save time and stress. You know it’s the right thing to do but you’ve now got to get that idea past the SLT to sign off. So, here are our Strive tips to help you win that argument.
Short on time? Here’s our condensed advice…
Quality of Execution:
Agencies bring expertise and attention to detail, ensuring a polished, professional event aligned with company standards.
Be Transparent:
Communicate the need and benefits of outsourcing to manage employee perceptions in tight economic times.
Time Management:
Agencies save substantial time, allowing internal teams to focus on their primary roles.
Industry Connections:
Agencies offer valuable contacts and solutions, enhancing event quality and team reputation.
Goal Alignment:
Link the event’s impact to company goals, like branding or recruitment, to support the case for outsourcing.
Competitor Advantage:
Cite competitors who have benefited from agency partnerships to stay competitive.
Cost-Benefit:
Agencies leverage supplier relationships for cost savings and improved attendee experience.
ROI Proof:
Agencies can quantify savings, time efficiency, and attendee satisfaction to justify costs.
SLT Meeting:
In-person meetings with SLT can foster trust and clarify event goals.
Exceptional Execution
By doing it in house you’ll do a ‘good’ job, but by outsourcing you’ll do a great job. Remind your managers of the high standards that the business upholds across the work you do. In line with that, events are a tangible representation of your company’s culture and ethos and it has to be faultless.
At Strive ‘exceptional execution’ is one of our four company values, we are obsessed with the finer details of events and have a team of event experts ready to lend their expertise to you. By working with us you are creating a situation where your event is exceptionally executed and your other work is also executed exceptionally, by you.
Say goodbye to doing everything mediocre, no one wants that do they? Working with an agency like us is undoubtedly going to ensure a higher standard of delivery than you and your in-house team could do. So make the argument that if your company is going to invest time and money into an event, why not take the steps to make it as exceptional as it can possibly be. Surely your SLT doesn’t want average or just good.
Cost Benefit Analysis
Let’s face it, bosses will drill down on the costs and you cannot be seen to be spending company money inefficiently or without a clear plan. Get really clear on what the direct costs are and put together a really clear and succinct list of the benefits to your company. Don’t forget to include some of the qualitative benefits such as enhanced attendee experience for your people, access to industry experts, and innovative ideas.
When it comes to costs of using an external agency, also focus on where they can save you money vs doing it yourself. The Strive team recently secured a £30,000 venue hire discount for one of our loyal clients. Our team has broad event backgrounds including being supplier side, giving us the inside edge on negotiating the right deals with these suppliers.
Feel free to explicitly ask us for this kind of information to help put together your cost benefit analysis. You can even message us right now by clicking here.
Time is Money
Without fail, every single person who has ever been tasked with running a company event has always underestimated the amount of time it will take them. Unfortunately your time is finite and the event date ain’t gonna change, so try and be realistic from the beginning. The saying ‘there are never enough hours in the day’ has never been truer than when you’re up against a hard deadline with a million moving parts, changing minds, last minute content and all eyes on you.
On average, working with Strive will save you 68 working days of your time. That will change depending on lead time and your specific event details of course, but it’s something to bear in mind and present effectively to your internal stakeholders when making your case. And depending on the nature of your relationship you might also want to add in there the reduction in stress and increase in sleep which are highly likely to come along with hiring Strive.
Benefit from Relationships
We do this professionally, day in,day out, so not only do we have templates, methods and working processes that you can really benefit from, but we have relationships and contacts across the whole event supply chain that you will in turn have access to.
When problems arise and you need to fire-fight with limited time, it’s often not what you know but who you know. Not only can our contacts and knowledge save you money as mentioned above, but will undoubtedly level up the delivery of your event (and make you look good to your senior leadership team in the process).
Align with your Goals
When presenting your case to the boss, always align with the overall company goals. That might sound something like this, “In our last 1-1 you mentioned again that we’re on a mission to attract some really top talent at the moment. This upcoming company offsite event is a great opportunity to capture some brilliant employer branding content, if we make the event top tier it’s a great case study for the kind of people we’re trying to attract.” Something along these lines will really help your case.
Mention Competitors
Senior leadership are always interested in what your direct competition is up to. Find a recent example from a similar company in your industry that has successfully worked with an external events agency and highlight the positives of their experience and measurable outcomes. We’ve got plenty of these to share, you can see some of them here.
Internal Optics
Lot’s of markets are in downturn at the moment, so justifying these events can be challenging. When we’re telling our employees about the slow down, and potentially making cuts, coming in hot with what looks like an all singing, all dancing expensive employee event can be hard for the team to swallow. So how can we reduce costs and be careful of optics? Communication. The key to everything, right?
If you clearly communicate with your people the importance of these team events, the reason you’re organising them, and what the desired outcomes are, they will appreciate the understanding. And going one step further and explaining why you’re outsourcing them (so you can focus on your day job) is even better.
Return on Investment
We imagine you’re always being tasked with figuring out ROI on these events, especially if you’re using an external agency. We’re more than happy to work with our clients on providing some real data on hours spent, cost saved, and attendee sentiment during and after the event.
Meet us!
At Strive we thrive when we’re in person meeting you and discussing your event goals in person. We’d love the opportunity to come and meet with you and your SLT team in person. We can help put their minds at rest by effectively demonstrating that we really understand your goals and vision, and that we are here to work in partnership with you.
In today’s world of remote working, when you bring your people together you absolutely must do it properly. There is so much clear value using an external event agency, and if you’d like to learn more about how strive can support your next event please pick up the phone or drop us a line.
