One of the best ways for companies to show their appreciation to the employees is to organize a picnic for them. Company picnics can build goodwill among your team members and facilitate communication and team building.
While company picnics are great for building goodwill and teamwork, there is more to picnic planning than just finding a venue and hiring a caterer to provide food and drinks. You must ensure that your employees are entertained during the picnic. If you fail to entertain your employees, it will not only affect their morale, but they are also less likely to attend any event organized by your company in the future.
More recently, turn out in company picnics has decreased owing to the fact that picnics aren’t fun anymore. Picnic organizers fail to provide any real entertainment to their guests and keep organizing same old boring picnics. One reason organizers fail to host fun company picnics is that they don’t have any idea about what must be done to make a picnic fun and entertaining. Moreover, making arrangements for entertainment in a company picnic can be hard since they have so many others planning details to take care of.
Therefore, in this post, we’ll show you a few entertainment ideas to make your picnic more fun and entertaining.
1. Choose the Right Venue
Making a company picnic fun and entertaining start with the selection of the venue. The reason venue selection is essential for an entertaining picnic is that you won’t be able to arrange fun activities for your guests if you don’t find a suitable venue. From Baker Beach to Corona Heights Park and Golden Gate Park, there are many great picnic locations in San Francisco. However, when you are planning to host a large scale company picnic, it is best to find a secluded location where other picnickers won’t get in the way of your picnic. Book a good venue and make sure to have it reserved for your company picnic. Moreover, find a venue that has enough space for different outdoor activities like inflatable games, scavenger hunt and treasure hunt, etc. You should also have a back-up plan in case the weather takes a turn for the worst. If it rains, you’ll have to provide shelter or take your guests into an indoor hall. Ask the venue manager if they have an indoor hall or can provide shelter and whether there’ll be any extra charges for them.
2. Reserve an Activities Coordinator
Activities coordinators can ensure that everything in your picnic unfolds smoothly. They can set up all the picnic games, gather participants to play the game and hand out designated prizes while keeping your picnic energy up. You won’t have to oversee the entertainment timeline of your picnic when you have an activities coordinator on hand to take care of everything. Activities coordinators are extremely vivacious and they do their best to bring out full potential of each guest to ensure that they have the best time of their life.
3. Encourage Teamwork
In order to bring your employees together, you should make arrangements for team building activities. Treasure hunt is an ideal team building activity. Relying on mental acuity, diversified knowledge and teamwork, this activity helps to showcase the talents of each individual. In treasure hunt, clues kept on various locations help participants find a treasure. The team that finds the hidden treasure first wins the game. Planning this game requires sufficient time and you must also be familiar with the location where it’s to be played.
In addition to treasure hunt, make sure you have access to volleyballs courts and softball fields. Softball, volleyball and other games also help unite your team members and facilitate team building and communication. You could also consider arranging carnival activities like water balloons, egg tosses, or dunks tanks which are likely to draw a good crowd and bring people together.
4. Do Something Different with the Food
Food isn’t the only thing that matters in a company picnic, but the menu will certainly be something your guests will be looking forward to. Remember it isn’t just about delicious food; you should create a delightful culinary experience that all your guests would love. For example, a cheese bar and macaroni with delicious toppings or cracking lobster tails in front of all your guests puts on an amazing show. Greet your employees with a summer cocktail, offer them custom sweets and end the culinary display on a high with fireworks.
5. Wash Away All the Worries
If you are organizing a picnic during the hot summer months, set up some water-based activities that’ll help your guests have some fun under the sun. From water wars to slip ‘n slides and dunk tanks, there are many water-based activities that can help your guests cool off. With the activities coordinator managing everything, you can rest assure that everyone will have a great time enjoying water-based activities.
6. Add Some Magic
Whether you hire a magician or opt for an illusionist, spark guests’ imagination and curiosity in amazing ways. You can also hire DJs to delight your guests with the sound of music that pairs perfectly with other entertainment activities. Let your employees capture the moments and mysteries during the company picnic in a photo booth so that they take magic from your company picnic home with them.
7. Inflate Competitive Spirits
There’s nothing like hopping in a rally car and cruising through the inflatable track or turning into a human sphere or sumo wrestler for a fun fight. Inflatable games like bungee run, giant twister, bouncy boxing, sumo wrestling, bounce houses and human gladiator joust can offer unique entertainment to your guests and add more pizzazz to your company picnic.
8. Opt for Indoor Activities
Picnics are most fun in the outdoors, but there’s a possibility that the weather might not be right for playing outdoor games. It could be snowing or raining or maybe it’s too hot. In that case, you’ll have to plan some indoor activities. Indoor activities are perfect when you can’t enjoy outdoor games.
“Pass the parcel” is an incredibly fun indoor activity. Turn on some music. Participants sit/stand in a circle and pass the object until the music stops playing. The person who is left with the object, when music stops, can’t continue the game or is given a task to complete.
You could divide the guests into teams or pairs for a quiz competition. This will increase communication and teamwork between your employees. Another good option is keep-the-pattern game. In this game, a counting pattern must be decided like counting in 10s or just counting in even numbers. One person says the starting number aloud and then each person that comes next maintains the same pattern. For an even numbers’ pattern, the first number will be 2. The person whose turn comes next must say 4. The one seated next to that person must say 6 and so on. The game becomes more challenging with complex patterns. If someone fails to follow the pattern, they’ll lose the game and the remaining participants will continue until only a single person remains.
9. Laughter Works Well
Another way to make your company picnic more fun and entertaining is to hire a comedian. A comedian can keep your guests entertained and relieve their tension through their jokes. When all your guests are laughing and enjoying themselves, relationships will strengthen naturally.
While many employees are skeptical about company picnics these days and prefer a day-out with their families over an office event, you can increase turn-out at your picnic by offering the entertainment activities discussed above. Make sure to convey the schedule of your picnic and all the activities you have planned for your employees before the day of the event to ensure maximum turn out. At the day of your company picnic, you’ll know that your efforts have paid off when you see your employees responding through peals of laughter.
If you are currently struggling to make arrangements for the entertainment activities highlighted above, we suggest that you take help from a professional picnic planner. At Bay Area Picnic Planners, our professional picnic planners can make all the arrangements for your company picnic. From organizing treasure hunt to planning a bouncy boxing and water-based activities, we can take care of everything. We can also find a suitable venue for your company picnic. You should check out our all-inclusive picnic packages where entertainment activities, food and drinks and other arrangements are all bundled together to save your dollars.
For more information, give us a buzz at 1-408-298-3001.
Image Credits
By cookelma – yayimages.com