Check out our upcoming webinar "Unlocking Team Potential: HR Lessons for Effective Events".

We'll explore the challenges of organizing team events that align with company culture and measure their true impact on the team.

Webinar combines theory with practical cases—top experts from the industry will share their experience, vision, and perspective, providing many practical examples and strategic cases.

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Rachel Wright, CEO and Managing Director of the event service Celbretti, knows how to make team events unforgettable. In a conversation with Maramio CEO Maria Bakatuk, she shared her insights on creating a celebration concept that aligns with company values, the important details to consider when organizing an event, and how to measure the success of team events.

I think the most important step at the very beginning is to clearly define the purpose of the event. A lot of times this step gets overlooked because people think the purpose is obvious—whether it's a summer event or a winter event, the goal is simply to have fun, right?

For example, for a distributed team’s annual on-site, one purpose might be to help team members meet new people.

Once you have a clear purpose, it becomes easier to design a format that will help you achieve that goal. If the purpose of your event is to help team members meet new people, I’d recommend using a format that puts folks in small groups of 5-8 for part of the time. Intentionally mix these groups, especially if you know which departments or individuals don’t often interact. In this way, you can use the event to intentionally create new connections where you need them, which will help your team work better together after the event

Before I start a project, I do my homework. I review the client’s website, look at their mission, and try to understand their values and company culture. I keep this in mind as we co-create the event and look for ways to pull it through in a way that makes sense.

For example, last summer we worked with Lingoda on an activity for their distributed team’s summer event. They wanted to use the event to connect people from different locations. Of course, their product helps people learn new languages to build bridges with others. We used this concept to create a digital icebreaker game centered on language learning.

Team members got cards with 4 questions they had to ask others. This helped the team bond over their experiences with learning and speaking different languages and find out about what others did to shape the Lingoda product. The card included a QR code that players scanned at the end to enter to win a prize. This helped us see how many people had played, how many new connections they’d made, and also allowed us to collect feedback!

Photo: Ira Efremova.

A memorable experience often involves a creative idea or an element of surprise—things that attendees really remember after an event. The good news is that you don't need a huge budget to achieve this!

For creative ideas, especially for summer events, starting with a fun theme that resonates with your team is a great approach. Recently, we helped a company celebrate their 10-year anniversary with a festival theme, which really clicked with the group. I was on-site and it was amazing to see the creative costumes and festival props that people brought. They really embraced the theme, making the event feel like a true festival!

I think having a theme gives people more opportunities to connect. Costumes are great conversation starters! In the end, the interactions you have with other people are what make an event really stand out, I think.

Oh, for sure! Especially when you don't have a large budget for your event, it's important to take time with your team to develop an out-of-the-box idea. This could mean taking a familiar format, like a barbecue or picnic, and putting a unique twist on it. For example, one of our first event formats was a "Picnic in the Park." The idea was to take a typical picnic and elevate it into something luxurious. Most of the materials weren't expensive; it was the creative idea that made it special.

Photo: Ira Efremova.

Typically, teams have one event in the summer and one in the winter. One of these events is usually a highlight, while the other can be more casual. Summer is perfect for casual events because you can do things outdoors. With the Spree and all the lakes around Berlin, getting out on the water is always a popular request! Of course, boat rides are fun, but I think there are other ways to spin this trend that are fun and impactful when it comes to team building.

For smaller teams, kayaking is a nice option. Pedales has some really nice tours in the southwestern part of the city. Self-driven boats are another option — especially nice for groups of up to 8 that want to talk and bond! For this, I’d recommend checking out GoBoat, which operates around Warschauer Brücke.

For larger teams, doing an activity around the water is a nice alternative to the boat party. Building a raft together, for example, is a fantastic team-building exercise plus lots of fun!

For example, a friend of mine worked at a company where they had a strategic on-site with a mountaineering theme. They created a visual identity for the event that connected to hiking and way-finding and then chose high-quality items — think Stanley cups and Patagonia zip-ups — with tasteful branding.

They also offered attendees a choice of which merchandise item they wanted to remember the event by which I thought was really clever, not to mention more sustainable.

This is where having a clearly defined purpose becomes even more important. Without a strong purpose, the metrics you choose can feel random. From there, there are different ways you can collect data about your event, for example:

• Engagement:

• Look at the interaction on your communication channels leading up to the event, such as comments and likes on Slack or your intranet posts.

• If you can, use a merge mail tool that allows you to see the open and click-through-rates on the emails you send out.

• Count the number of attendees at the event.

• Team Connection:

• Use an icebreaker game with a prize that’s linked to a survey to incentivize people to talk to new folks (and measure how many do!).

• Impact Areas:

• If you include a knowledge-based tournament at your event, you can also measure the impact this has on participation in internal trainings.

And, of course, use a post-event survey to measure Net Promoter Score (NPS) and other feedback. This will help you find out what folks value most so that you can tweak your events, turning them into powerful cultural touchstones that are a lot of fun and take the company towards strategic goals.