Well, here we are nearing the July 4th United States independence day celebration. That means my dog Caesar will be going crazy with all the fireworks that will be going off in the neighborhood. He hates it with a passion.
With the holiday approaching it also means most all schools are done for this year. With all the snow days that had to be made up in so many parts of the country it seemed like this school year was going to go on forever.
Most people I know are also planning some sort of vacation time with their family. Maybe just a long weekend at the lake or a trip to see relatives but most people do plan some sort of family event.
You have another family you know. How about the family that sees to it your customers are serviced properly each and every day? What do you have planned for them? Let me suggest some sort of family outing such as a corporate picnic etc. that involves the entire family. I personally believe their is a huge benefit in involving the spouses/significant others and children of our employees in some sort of event that promotes company fellowship. Let me offer a couple of suggestions that worked very well for us.
How about a family day picnic where the company provides all of the food and drink? This is the day to honor your employees and their families so don't ask them to bring anything. As the years went by, we actually had a committee, made up of employees in the field and our office staff, that planned the event. Eventually they were recommending that employees bring their favorite dish and the company ended up providing only the soft drinks and sometimes the meat. We built on it each year to where is became quite an event and at a very reasonable investment.
One thing we found to be very popular was to have something to involve the children each year. For example,
---We hired a clown to paint the faces of the children and to create balloons in different animal shapes at the request of the children. We found children hanging around the clown the entire time he/she was there.
---Along the same line, we hired a magician that would do about a 15 minute show 2 or three times during the afternoon. My biggest problem there was trying to keep the adults out of the front row so the children could see.
---We rented a trampoline game like you see at McDonald's etc. where the children could play all day if they wanted to in an indoor type environment for safety.
We found the investment in the entertainment to be very reasonable. Most yellow pages have magicians and clowns for rent. These are usually people that are doing it as a second job etc.
We also used the picnic event to have a short honor ceremony where we provided plaques and gift certificates to employees with 1 year or 5 years etc. of service. We also made sure we had some sort of a small giveaway for everyone in attendance such as a coffee mug etc. The ideas on the giveaways are countless but I think it is important to have SOMETHING for everyone in attendance.
One more thing. We had this event in every branch office in the company. The dates were published well in advance and I did my very best to attend each one of them. That became an interesting adventure trying to schedule me in about 7 states with multiple offices for company picnics but I didn't miss many, if any.
We also found that the success of each event was in direct proportion to the excitement generated by the branch manager. A couple of ours weren't real excited to host the event and it showed. Ironically, it also showed in the performance of their profit and loss statement. Those that were excited and created involvement also had the least turnover and the most profit. Interesting, isn't it?
So if you haven't planned anything this year, let me suggest you consider a company event such as I have outlined here. There are lots of different ways to do an event and I have only mentioned what we did. I am sure others have had very successful events and if you have let us know. We would love to hear of other ideas that have worked.
As the title of this article implies, it's summertime. We hope yours will be full of enjoyment both for your immediate family and your company family.
Till next time.
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