Kickstart the New Year with an inspirational meeting

Motivating everyone after the festive break can be a challenge, so don’t make the event too rigid. While you need an agenda, make sure your meeting remains fluid by encouraging attendees to give feedback and voice their own ideas.

This is a time for planning for the year ahead and discussing new projects. It’s also a time for reflecting on your successes and failures of the past year.

Even your own projects that didn’t go as well as expected can provide lessons in how to do things in the future. Use all your experiences as the basis for your action plan for the next 12 months.

Read on for some tips on how to plan your event effectively and persuade attendees to bounce around some ideas – even if they are feeling jaded after the festivities.

New location
Don’t meet in your regular room – try meeting off-site and enjoy a change of scenery. Doing something different can have a positive effect on your team. If you meet in your usual room at the office, it will feel like you’ve never been away.

Hiring a fresh venue can lift people’s spirits, leading to a more enthusiastic and focused discussion. Anything that inspires enthusiasm will encourage more commitment, while vibrant discussions can lead to business goals being achieved quicker. Hold your meeting in a dedicated venue to enhance delegates’ creativity.

Make sure you order some refreshments to keep everyone happy and allow your team to break away from their office persona. You may find they will collaborate differently in a fresh new environment and come up with some creative ideas.

Involve everyone
When you’re planning your strategy for the year ahead, you may need to invite along employees who are not normally involved with most of your meetings. As well as your team, the gathering could include colleagues from the marketing, sales and finance departments.

It’s a good idea to get everyone together at the start of the year so that everyone understands the company’s goals and what their role is in achieving them. Making sure everyone is on the same page from the outset is one of the most important things you will do in the New Year.

Team building
Although it may sound cliché, organising a team-building event is an ideal activity for January. A lot of people are likely to have the “January blues” and will still be in post-Christmas mode.

Motivate and refresh your employees to improve teamwork and communication before you start any new project. This is especially important if you’re recruiting any new staff, or merging existing teams together. The more relaxed atmosphere of the “kickstart” meeting is the ideal time to introduce everyone and organise team-building activities to break the ice.

Collectively, as a group, hold a brainstorming session, when everyone is invited to throw in their ideas, even if they might seem off the wall.

Get creative
When employees feel more relaxed, they tend to be creative. Try to make your meeting as engaging as possible – as well as the traditional presentation, or question and answer sessions, mix it up a bit.

Organise group chats, step outside for some fresh air, or even organise a less formal ice-breaker, such as inviting people to chat about their Christmas and how they’re feeling going into the New Year.

The last thing you want is an environment where your attendees are sitting around a large boardroom table, feeling unenthusiastic and tired as they listen to one person talking! Make sure the stimulating aroma of fresh coffee and croissants is in the air, as one school of thought suggests having a pleasant aroma in the room subconsciously relaxes everyone.

With a little extra care and planning, your first meeting of the year will achieve your aims and you’ll leave the conference room feeling you’ve accomplished something, instead of feeling like it’s “back to the grindstone”!

If you’re looking for somewhere different to hold your business event, check out &Meetings’ selection of affordable meeting rooms for hire – we can even provide the refreshments! Give us a call on 0800 073 0499 for more information.