It's easy to assume that an event app only has a place at external events and conferences. In reality, that couldn't be further from the truth! Whether you're running internal programs with large company-wide events, or many 20-50 person meetings throughout the year, there is a place in your tech stack for an event app.
Employee engagement during meetings has never been more difficult to harness, in fact, according to Udemy's 2018 Workplace Distraction Report 60% of employees feel meetings are a source of distraction in their workday. This makes finding unique and practical ways to boost engagement at meetings all the more important -- enter technology.
We've seen event technology be applied to all types of internal use cases among our customers with success in boosting engagement among employees. Here are some of the most popular internal uses for event apps that we've found:
1. All-Hands Meetings
When gathering your team for a weekly all-hands, having a concise agenda is never more important. You'll want to make sure that the 30-60 minutes you spend with your team is as efficient as possible.
Use your event app at all-hands and company meetings to:
- Distribute agendas, important info, and talking points pre-meeting.
- Keep a schedule of events upcoming so that the conversation can be focused, and not repetitive.
2. Company Offsites
A company-wide offsite comes with so many questions from staff leading up to the event, that was the case when we held our last offsite. The event app really helped to cut down on so many questions to the organizer and keep the meeting running smoothly. Not only was it a key to organization, it also enabled a lot of fun as well.
Use your event app at company off-sites to:
- Communicate important information for travel, accommodations and special events and activities.
- Take polls and surveys to find out about anything from food allergies, or activity preferences of your employees.
- Play icebreaker games, our favorite is Icebreaker Espionage, or keep a leaderboard to spark some friendly competition.
- Highlight key company messages, goals and action items with sections of your app.
3. Team or Department Meetings
Many have a misconception that an event app can only be used for large meetings, but that's not the case with the right event technology you can spur engagement at smaller meetings and be more productive with features for example:
- A clear agenda is still important no matter what the meeting size, use your event app agenda to help give your team a heads-up on who is presenting.
- With live question and answer functionality, you can utilize your app to streamline questions during your team meetings so that you can come back to the most relevant questions for all team-members and address one-off questions with individuals. This is especially useful when you have remote teams, as audio can sometimes not work--and technology allows those who may get "disconnected" to stay in the conversation.
- With peer-to-peer Q&A capabilities, you can even enable your employees to self-solve together, and help answer one another questions long after your team meeting has ended.
4. Sales Kick-Offs
The sales kick-off use case fits perfectly with the functionality of an event app: it empowers organizers to personalize and cater to experiences that best fit each employee. It is an essential tool for knowledge retention and networking.
- Post travel, accommodation and things to do within the app.
- Create information sections that speak in more depth to the new products or topics you'll be covering at your sales kick-off.
- Manage sessions and speakers within your organization.
- Personalize content for different attendee types, so you can create a unique experience for your top sales executives and VIPs. This also helps you make sure that different groups of kick-off attendees know what sessions are mandatory/optional for them.
- "Lead scanning" and lead suggestion features can be used as a networking tool internally instead to help employees connect with team members most relevant to their roles.
5. Learning & Development
Training doesn't need to be left out of event app use either. Actually, knowledge retention can be improved through use of features such as:
- Polling and quizzing during your sessions for a real-time view into how well employees are grasping topics.
- Live Q&A sessions where employees can ask questions anonymously that they may feel uncomfortable asking aloud.
- Survey attendees post-training so that you can optimize the content within sessions for your next round of training.
6. Year-Round Use
We've seen customers re-define the internal use cases for our products by creating a community in their event app that functions as it's own, always-on social network for employees. That's how we also use our product year-round here at DoubleDutch too! Your event app doesn't need to stop providing value when you don't have meetings or internal events.
With a year-round event app you can:
- Use the activity feed as a way to connect employees year-round with what's happening at other offices, or locations and share great news and project outcomes.
- Use the leaderboard, and gamification features to encourage participation and engagement.
- Keep your HR policies, org charts, and core company values at your employee's fingertips within the event app.
- Take polls and surveys to allow employees to learn more about each other, or gather information for upcoming activities or events.
Event apps are no longer just for flagship events, or external meetings that your organization hosts. Event tech has become essential to facilitate and engage employees with your meetings, kick-offs and events.
