How to Build an In-House Event Planning Team

Whether you’re representing a corporation or an institution, you already know that planning multiple events requires a lot of effort and time. This is especially true if you’re outsourcing the work to marketing and communication departments, or even worse, to a personal assistant. And don’t get us wrong: Assistants are great when it comes to dealing with the logistics, yet without a proper planning background or the necessary help, they may feel overwhelmed and end up burned out. On the other hand, there are plenty of organizations or corporations that decide to rely on the help of an event agency each time they run an event. The downside there, however, is that it can make a big hole in your budget (and that hole gets bigger with every event). Is there any other solution? Well, if you’re representing a big company or institution and running multiple large events per year, you might consider the possibility of building an in-house event planning team.

Why do you need one?

First, you’ll be able to centralize your efforts and have your in-house planning team draft an event strategy considering your marketing focus. Second, your event logistics team will help you develop a specific event know-how as the hallmark of your brand, at the same time gathering a series of good practices that are well-aligned with what your audience(s) need. Third, you’ll have better control over the planning and event budget. So how can you build an in-house event planning team? Here are a few steps you might want to consider:

Step #1. Decide the key roles of the planning team

If there’s one thing we should settle right now, it’s the fact that it’s almost impossible for one person to manage the event logistics all alone. A real team and role and task distribution are needed. Although nowadays, it’s expected that the event manager execute all sorts of tasks (from designing Facebook ads and creating mobile apps to negotiating with the suppliers and analyzing the event data), in fact, you’ll want to hire niche professionals whose collaborative work will result into awesome and flawless events. Typical key roles within an event planning team include:

• event coordinator
• meeting designer
• event data analyst
• event marketing professional
• brand experience designer
• media manager
• production crew manager,
• etc.

The important thing is to determine the composition of your team.

Step #2. Choose the event team leader

This is the person who’ll design the event strategy and make sure it’s well-aligned with your business or organization goals. He or she will also be responsible for transmitting the culture of your institution or corporation to other team members, embedding your brand’s values and philosophy. Being the “headmaster” of the entire planning team, this person will help you decide on and transform the event vision into reality, while using the collaborative power of his or her team.

Step #3. Don’t obsess over academic credentials

In some cases, you might hire people with specific degree, such as lawyers or accountants. When it comes to your event planning team, however, things are a bit different. The academic offer for future event professionals is quite scarce. Apart from that, this job is learnt by doing, not by sitting at a desk and taking notes while a professor dictates the principles of event planning. So instead of searching for prestigious event management credentials on the candidates’ CVs, focus on their working experience.

• How many years have they worked in the events industry?
• Did they work for an event agency or as part of an in-house event planning team?
• What is their expertise?

When hiring, all these questions will matter more than their degrees.

Step #4. Establish the work dynamic

Once you’ve created your in-house event planning team, you’ll have to go over the year calendar with them, establish the dates for the upcoming events, and discuss the characteristics of each event. Subsequently, you’ll have to decide the work dynamic and the ways in which your team will plan the events. One step that will get you closer to your desired results is to ask your new team to assess their needs and decide what digital tools they need to accomplish their tasks. Next, you’ll establish a planning protocol and an accountability system that will help everyone to keep up with their tasks and evaluate the pinpointed KPIs.

Wrap-up

If your institution or corporation is running a few events per year, there’s no need to build an in-house event planning team. You can outsource the work to an event agency or even get your marketing team to manage the logistics (using an event management platform, obviously). However, if your organization or business is running a big number of events, the best decision is to invest in creating an efficient event planning team that will operate in-house and make sure that the event strategy is well-aligned with your event’s goals.