Hey, everyone! Let’s have a meeting! in Business Firstby Annemarie Franczyk
Few will get excited about such a prospect, regardless of the number of exclamation points you use.
What do you need to engender enthusiasm? A location that’s more interesting than the conference room down the hall. Think park lodges, theaters, historic homes, art galleries, forts, greenhouses, even spiritualist communities.
While the change of scenery of an off-site meeting requires a bit more planning and expense, it can boost employee morale, improve communication among staff and build team spirit, experts say. One of them is Mattie Stevenson, owner of Above & Beyond Marketing and Events Management in Tonawanda.
“You tend to get their attention more because you are taking them out of a common place to something more exciting,” she says. “They experience something totally different from the norm. Now, they’re not just at a meeting, they’re interacting with each other in a different environment.”
Take, for example, the Buffalo Botanical Gardens on South Park Avenue, which hosts groups from 10 to 350 and provides projection equipment and other meeting essentials. Imagine the impact if, before the meeting or during a break, your group was to tour through the 1899 glass-domed conservatory with its tropical plants and waterfalls.
“It has a soothing, natural setting that may be more conducive to people participating more fully with whatever the intent of the meeting is,” says David Swarts, president and CEO.
Can your conference room do that?
At Everywoman Opportunity Center Inc., monthly staff meetings go off-site twice a year. Meeting agendas are the same as any month – committee reports, contract status, training, strategic plan review – but the locations are inspired and include some interesting activity or event to take in.
For example, meetings have been held at the Erie County Fair, Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, the Lily Dale Assembly, the Niagara Power Vista, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Fort Niagara and the ballpark.
Executive Director and CEO Myrna Young says these meetings always end with a sense of renewal.
“When you go to different places, you dress differently, you look at each other differently, you eat different food,” she says. “We come back with a different perspective.”
Young says an off-site meeting with catered lunches for about 25 staff members generally runs a reasonable $400.
“I noticed that people look forward to it and at the end they’re grateful for it,” Young says. “In the scheme of things, when you want to reward your folks, spending $400 is not much.”
To come up with a unique location, an idea may be to think of where you last took the kids or visitors from out of town, such as the Burchfield Penney Art Center, next to Buffalo State College.
Events and rentals manager Allie Brady calls the art center a hidden treasure for meetings. Several business organizations have meetings at the center every week. Some groups are as small as an eight-person executive board, others have been 150 people for a year-end review.
“They know it’s an art museum, but when they learn it also has meeting space, it really takes it up a notch,” Brady says. “Our boardroom overlooks the campus, which is great. It’s not a cold place; it’s more intimate. It’s inviting, it’s hip, it’s beautiful.”
If art won’t do it for your group, there are the animals at Hidden Valley Animal Adventure in Varysburg. The park is known for trolley tours of the resident wildebeests, zebras, camels and others but it also has a lodge, an outdoor patio and island gazebo for meetings and other events. Verity Folan, tours and event sales manager, says meetings usually include a break when park tours are offered.
“It’s quality time you can’t get at the office,” Folan says.
Most Erie County parks have some stand-alone buildings that could provide a relatively nearby getaway for a meeting. At Chestnut Ridge Park, for example, there’s the tucked-away Commissioner’s Cabin, which is surrounded by woods and sits on the edge of a fishing reservoir. If it didn’t have a full kitchen and bathroom facilities, it could be called rustic.
Parks Commissioner Troy Schinzel suggests a tour of the parks’ website, then a follow-up visit to a site to ensure it will meet the needs of the group before booking a location,.
If off-site is out of the question, Stevenson of Above & Beyond Marketing suggests some on-site creativity. Go on the roof of the building, she suggests, or turn the conference room over to a fun theme, with decorations and appointments.
“Change the room,” Stevenson says, “from typical white walls and a white board with the phone in the middle of the table.”