Company retreat, corporate summit, business conference… No matter how you dress it up, it’s just work in a different location.
But what if you could take all of the boring work stuff at your next meeting, and inject it with a whole load of fun activities? Not only can you break up the boredom, but your staff will benefit from a huge boost in morale, too.
Imagine transforming the mundane into the extraordinary, turning obligatory corporate gatherings into eagerly anticipated events. The secret lies in weaving innovative corporate event ideas into the fabric of traditional business meetings. By doing so, you create an environment where collaboration flourishes, creativity is unleashed, and team spirit is rejuvenated.
This approach not only enriches the work experience but also reinforces a positive company culture, attracting talent and retaining your best employees.
Traditional corporate events often miss the mark, serving as mere formalities rather than opportunities for genuine connection and growth. That’s where creative corporate event ideas come into play. From adrenaline-pumping adventure sports to tranquil wellness retreats, these events offer something for everyone, ensuring that employees feel valued, understood, and, most importantly, excited to participate.
Moreover, incorporating unique corporate event ideas into your planning signals to your team that their well-being and professional development are top priorities. It’s a clear message that the company invests in its people, not just its products or services. This shift in perspective can dramatically impact employee satisfaction, loyalty, and overall performance.
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Why Creative Corporate Event Ideas Matter
Your staff will see straight through a boring team-building activity. And if they’re not happy, you’ll know about it. When it comes to the actual work, they’ll be completely disinterested and unmotivated. They’ll probably spend the whole time thinking about how long it is until they can just go home.
Not only is that a complete waste of time and money for the business, but it can leave a bad taste in the mouth of your staff. For some, it could even be the final straw. If they don’t feel appreciated, a lack of care and attention to an event that’s supposed to feel a bit different could be a slap in the face. And they might start looking to greener pastures for their future employment.
This is why creative corporate event ideas are so crucial. It’s not easy to find something that’s enjoyable, inclusive, realistic, and falls within your budget. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Our list has ideas no matter what your size or budget, including:
- Small business event ideas
- Corporate retreat activity ideas
- Sales conference activities
- Entertainment ideas for business conferences
- And much more.
You can repurpose many of the ideas on this list to fit a large or small-scale event. You can even incorporate several of these corporate meeting activities into one event, to give your staff a choice in what they get involved with.
Interesting Corporate Event Ideas
1. Corporate Retreats in Nature
If your staff regularly work in an office, especially in a large town or city, a trip out to the country might be the perfect remedy to all that hustle and bustle. But make sure you spend time actually enjoying the surroundings – otherwise, it’s just a regular work day in another location.
Additionally, connecting with nature can help to improve our overall mental health.
And don’t think you have to go somewhere completely remote. Even if you can’t commit to a full corporate retreat in nature, taking a day trip out to places like commons and National Trust sites can offer an easy way to connect with nature.
2. Health and Wellbeing Activities
We wouldn’t be a very good health and wellbeing company if we didn’t blow our own horn once in a while. Yes, we’re completely biased on this one, but we do have good evidence to back it up as one of the best corporate event ideas.
Incorporating health and wellbeing activities into a large conference or regional meeting can absolutely make an event. We’ve facilitated a variety of different preventative wellbeing interventions at conferences and events around the UK. We’ve even visited several European countries for one of our clients!
The winner here is absolutely Employee Health Checks. They’re quick and easy to take part in, plus they give attendees some real, actionable advice to help improve their overall health.
Health checks are a great activity to facilitate during breaks in meetings, and our numbers don’t lie – our health checks reached over 9,000 UK employees in 2023 alone.
3. Charity and Volunteer Work
Getting out of the workplace to undertake a charitable endeavour is always a positive venture. Not only does it look good from a corporate responsibility perspective, but helping out others can actually lead to an improved sense of wellbeing. That’s why volunteering is one of the most cost-effective and rewarding corporate event ideas.
There are a lot of charities in the UK, and many of them will be very grateful for a team of volunteers to help out for a day. Contact some of your local charities, or speak to staff and find out what charities are important to them personally.
4. Mystery Dinner Theatre
We all love a good murder mystery story, but what if you could be in the middle of it – and even help solve it?
That’s the idea behind mystery dinner theatre. Actors play out a murder mystery, and the diners help to solve it using various clues. In between the actual dinner, of course.
If you’ve got a creative bunch of staff, they could even write and act out the story themselves. But if the sound of The Mystery of Dave’s Poisoned Sandwich in the Fridge (sensing some passive aggression, perhaps) doesn’t appeal to you, there are plenty of events companies in the UK that will run a mystery dinner theatre for you.
5. Professional Development Workshops
Okay, now bear with us.
We know this technically isn’t an event away from work – it’s just an extension of work – but offering staff the chance to develop their professional skills as part of your conference can still be rewarding for them. Even if it’s not one of the more exciting corporate event ideas on this list.
The important thing to remember here is, don’t just force staff into boring CPD workshops so that they can log their hours. Get some interesting speakers in to run workshops on topics related to staff’s expertise but with a twist.
Are you having a summit for sales staff? Instead of hosting a sales skills workshop, why not have an author deliver a session about the art of storytelling? Your team will learn how to weave an interesting narrative, to help evoke an emotional response in their leads.
Or, if you’d like to offer some soft-skill training to staff, you could even explore ideas such as stress and resilience training workshops.
6. Themed Costume Parties
This is a classic when it comes to corporate event ideas. An office party or a night out with a fancy dress theme – it’s almost a UK institution at this point. And everybody loves an excuse to get dressed up in a silly outfit.
If you want to mix it up a little, why not take things a step further – host your meetings or work day in fancy dress, too!
Getting the boss delivering the quarterly report dressed as a giant banana, anyone?
7. Tech-Free Retreats
When it comes to technology, it really is a love-hate relationship. Certain developments have made our lives indescribably easier. But for every positive that technology brings, it feels like there’s a downside, such as the growing impact of social media usage on mental health.
Get everyone to put their phones and laptops away and focus on social connection. You could even combine this with number one on this list, and have a tech-free retreat in nature.
Because technology is so pervasive in our society, this could be one of the trickier corporate event ideas to implement. If your staff absolutely can’t be without their tech for too long (let’s face it, phones run our lives now), try designating tech-free mornings or happy hours. See what works for your team.
8. Culinary Competitions
I’m terrible at cooking. Which is why I’d love to compete in a culinary contest against my colleagues. It would be awful and hilarious.
In fact, here at New Leaf, we almost took part in a Great British Bake-Off-style activity in Birmingham for our Christmas Party. I think the team were just worried that I’d show them up, to be honest.
When it comes to corporate event ideas, this one is great for small businesses, and could help your team learn a valuable life skill, too!
9. Adventure Sports Day
Now this activity our team did actually take part in. Adventure sports may be a stretch, but we did go kayaking and a local canal, followed by a pub lunch.
We’re a small team here at New Leaf, and luckily everyone was up for it. Your workplace may be different, however, so don’t be surprised if some people are less keen to get involved in physical activity.
Similarly, some staff may not be able to get involved due to a disability. It’s crucial to ensure that all staff would be willing to participate in an endeavour like this.
If you have a larger team, it’s probably a good idea to offer an alternative activity to this, too, so that staff have a choice if they don’t want to get involved.
10. Film Festival
Hosting a film festival is one of the easiest corporate event ideas. It can run at pretty much any scale and, thanks to streaming platforms, you can host a movie screening pretty much anywhere and on any device.
You could even have staff vote on their favourite films to include or theme them around a certain topic.
Why not run a series of sales-related movies at your next sales conference? Think, Wolf of Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Jerry Maguire, The Founder… The list goes on.
11. Art and Wine Night
Learning to paint or draw can be a great way to relax after a long day of corporate buzzwords, so if you’re looking for relatively chilled-out corporate event ideas, this is a great path to go down.
There are also strong links between engaging in the creative arts and improving mental wellbeing.
If your team are up for it, you could also indulge in some wine or beer tasting during your art lesson – to feel truly classy!
12. Escape Rooms
If you’ve never come across the concept of an escape room before, it’s pretty much in the name. You’re locked in a room and you need to escape!
You’ll be solving puzzles and working as a team to overcome the challenges to get the key to the door that lets you out, so this is a great activity to help build soft skills.
This is also one of the best corporate event ideas for small businesses, as venues generally allow teams of up to 6 to take part at any one time.
13. Talent Show
The words ‘talent show’ either fill you with excitement or dread. But when it comes to corporate event ideas, this can actually be one of the most entertaining and cost-effective activities.
This probably only works at larger businesses and events, because not everyone will want to get up on stage to potentially embarrass themselves. But if you’ve got a large group of staff, you’re bound to have a few people in there with some exciting hidden talents that can get a crowd up on their feet.
And if you’re the boss, you’ve got to get involved. Those are the rules, unfortunately!
14. Historical Tours
Every corner of the UK is full of rich history. Whether you work in a town, a city, or somewhere more rural, there’s likely a historical attraction nearby.
Take staff away from the workplace for a day and let them learn about local history. Or go somewhere far-flung.
If you fancy an overnight, you could even do something completely different and spend an evening locked behind bars with your team!
15. Virtual Reality Experiences
Virtual reality is a fairly new novelty when it comes to corporate event ideas, but it’s rapidly exploding in popularity.
Fight a horde of zombies, escape a burning building, or explore your way through a fantasy world – there are a range of experiences available for anyone to get involved in.
This is another great activity that helps to promote soft skills. Though we’re not sure if Karen from Accounting’s zombie sniping expertise counts as a soft skill.
Planning Out Corporate Event Ideas
Hopefully our list of corporate event ideas has sparked your imagination a little. If so, now it’s time to start planning your event!
Don’t forget the importance of holding an inclusive activity that can be accessed and enjoyed by everyone. You could start by surveying your staff to get their opinions on activity ideas, which may flag up any issues in terms of inclusion and accessibility. This is especially important for events that might involve physical activity or sports.
You should also consider your company culture. If your staff are particularly outgoing, parties, competitions, and sports will probably go down a treat. If your work environment is more reserved, passive corporate event ideas, like a film festival, might be more suitable.
Of course, every workplace, regardless of company culture, can benefit from preventative employee health checks. We’re not just saying that – honest!
Don’t be Afraid of Outside Help
If it’s just not happening for you, or if you simply haven’t got the time, don’t be afraid to reach out for help.
There’s an abundance of event planners throughout the UK who will be brimming with corporate event ideas. So why not take the load off your shoulders and dump it on the experts?
Conclusion
Diving into the world of corporate event ideas can be mind-boggling, especially if you don’t know where to start.
Just remember these key tips when setting out:
- Align events with your company culture.
- Don’t be afraid to ask employees what they want to do.
- Make sure activities are accessible and inclusive.
- Offer multiple activities, if you can.
- Don’t be afraid to tie in professional development – soft skills are important too!
- And of course… Employee health checks are perfect for every event 😉
And whatever activity you decide on, remember that sometimes things don’t always go to plan. If an idea falls flat or doesn’t work like you’d hoped, at least you’re one activity closer to finding the perfect idea for your team.
We hope that we’ve given you something to go on for your next event. And if you’re looking for more corporate event ideas with a wellbeing twist, why not check out our article 52 Ideas for Workplace Wellbeing?
