The New Face of Corporate Meetings

Image by WingateStateArena 

This is a guest post from Maureen Santoro from Atlas Meetings + Incentives.

There was a time when corporate meetings were the definition of elaborate. Opulent hotels were booked, big-name entertainment flown in, and extravagance seemed the norm. For better or worse, those days are long gone. With the economic crisis, companies are looking for new things to do when they plan a corporate-wide meeting. And it’s often the already overburdened administrative professional that gets tasked with making the arrangements.

The new face of corporate meetings emphasizes smaller and leaner over extravagance and opulence. And before you set about planning the next meeting there are some trends you should know about. Some of the most important changes that corporate meetings are seeing include:

• Volunteerism (also called Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR) – companies are using the corporate meeting as a chance to reach out into the community and do something good for the city that’s hosting them.
• Going green – many companies insist that the site that holds their corporate meeting follow green policies and that their meeting be as green as possible.
• Team building – it’s no longer about celebrating the success of the company by being extravagant, but about how a company can bring employees together to make them a stronger team. Many corporate meetings include numerous team-building exercises.
• Social media - it is being used more and more in corporate meetings, to the point that any meeting planner who doesn’t communicate with meeting attendees using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter is not getting the message out.
• Businesses are meeting again – while there was a time when companies were using smaller meetings or online meetings, the trend is now growing where managers and employees are getting together once more. The meetings may be smaller, but business is still happening face-to-face.

If you are the professional assistant tasked with planning the next corporate meeting, be prepared for one or all of these topics to pop up. And if any of it sounds too complicated, remember that there are always meeting and event planners who know the in’s and out’s of how to plan these events and can help you, often at little to no cost.

Maureen Santoro is Manager, Group Operations for Atlas Travel Internationals Meetings + Incentives.  She has 20 years of experience planning meetings for companies of all sizes.

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Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!