Virtual company events such as innovation workshops or sales events are becoming increasingly more popular, especially when employees can access the event in their own time and on their own devices. These virtual events work best when employees are encouraged to participate, are receiving relevant information and continue to engage throughout.
To help towards this, we’ve put together 5 ways you can improve employee engagement for your virtual events.
1. Keep content bite-sized and relevant
Being able to provide content that is easy to consume, captivating and relevant is the key to high employee engagement. Before every virtual event, providing a schedule to attendees helps them to know which session will be most relevant to them and encourages employee engagement before the event.
Furthermore, when running your event, ensure you break up content into manageable chunks. Short breaks maximise attention, improve content consumption and maintain employee engagement. Between sessions, incorporate and encourage interaction by running polls and quizzes, employees will stay more engaged knowing they are answering questions on what has been delivered to them.
2. Encourage networking
Live conferences are well known for the chance to have 1:1 conversations which often lead to a growth in your network and virtual events can incorporate this too. Encourage your employees to network and connect with others throughout the event by giving them access to a list of other employees participating. By doing this, it optimises networking and helps towards improving employee relationships, productivity and engagement.
3. Welcome employee feedback
Incorporate interpersonal communication throughout or after your event by encouraging employees to suggest event improvements and provide feedback. This helps employees to feel included and valued as individuals. Knowing their opinion matters can help them to continuously stay more engaged and be open to contributing more during future events.
4. Utilise gamification
Gamification is a great way to make your virtual events engaging by offering things such as competitions and redeemable points. The more your employees are engaged and interacting with the event, the more points they receive.
For example, by encouraging engagement in multiple Q&A’s, rewards or points can then be redeemable to those who participate to be used towards topping the leaderboard, unlocking additional content or a prize of your choice. As well as this, try utilising an event hashtag and ask employees to post pictures and facts they’ve learnt throughout the event, encouraging employee engagement in a fun and interactive way.
5. Recognise and encourage participation
Employees who are dedicated to your organisation are often already highly engaged; however, to ensure it is continued, make sure you are recognising and rewarding it. Incorporating leaderboards during virtual events can help towards encouraging employees to increase their participation and engagement.
Highlighting and updating the top event contributors throughout the day can incentivise those who are further down the leaderboard to participate more. This can be further encouraged by offering prizes to the employees who contribute the most.
By actioning the above 5 points, as well as utilising platforms such as 3radical Voco for your virtual events, you can guarantee an increase in your employee engagement. Read our case study on how DBS Bank used the 3radical Voco platform to produce a 5 day virtual conference which resulted in a more connected workforce and increased productivity.
For more information on the use of gamification and how you can have your virtual event up and running in 6 weeks, click here.