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How did we put people first in the 2019…
In my 20 years and a marketer and events planner, I have had the opportunity to bring to life some fun events; from leadership days to team events, expos to conferences, breakfast sales events to a Santa training school.
One thing I noticed from the very first day is the way that Enable managed to always put their people first in everything they do, by:
- Creating homebase hangs, monthly social events hosted to help keep all our employees connected to the bigger team.
- Encouraging the Enable staff to stay up to date with their professional skills by creating a healthy competition with certifications and training
- Utilising online communications tools like WhatsApp where Enablers share ideas, congratulate each other on wins and birthdays and spend the day having a giggle
- And finally investing in an annual company conference.
In 2018 we created a conference event for 68 enablers that achieved an amazing result, most of our Enablers have rated the overall quality of our conference as 10/10. We had a team of Australian, Singaporean and Hong Kong Enablers bursting with enthusiasm about our company.
The 2019 conference needed to build on the positive work from the year before. So I set about creating a conference that would engage, inspire, and educate our Enablers, suit a number of ages, nationalities and employees with a variety of experience. How did Enable help me to make this happen:
- By giving me the chance to do things I have never done before
- By providing clear outcomes for the engagement of Enablers at each event over the three days
- By trusting me to achieve my targets and offer support through the planning
- By believing in my creative and (some times out-there) ideas to help build energy and enthusiasm throughout the three days
Over the three days, I utilised our passionate leadership team to release new systems updates. We arranged for our leaders to provide relevant/relatable content and facilitate specialised inhouse training. We encouraged staff to present from their own experience from previous ServiceNow events. We went ‘DIY’ for all of the finer details like decorations, swag and conference branding (even staying up late one night to blow up 100 balloons for a branded photo wall for the entrance of the Awards dinner.) We invited clients to come and provide positive feedback in the form of a case study to our broader team and managed to cuddle a koala. We hosted a leadership panel with our very own Oprah lifting the energy in the room but importantly providing our team with the chance to learn more about the leadership team and ask open questions. We made the entire room cry when we heard the impact that our CSR sponsorship is having on some of the students we sponsor through The Smith Family. We created a networking challenge with over 100 questions about our team encouraging individuals to find out about the people they work with. We also created a series of Tribe challenges that encouraged a little healthy competition bringing together tribes of Enablers that are spread across 9 locations and 4 countries.
We ate, we laughed, we drank, we cuddled the Hong Kong team, we listened, we learned, we networked, we partied, we competed, we laughed a little more.
With months of planning and three days of the conference, I worked hard but no part of it felt like hard work. We’ve come home with a renewed sense of passion and personally, I can’t believe I had the opportunity to live out the Enable Values by helping to put our Enablers first with an event like our Company Conference.
