Do your internal events deliver successfully on your organisation’s ‘business critical’ goals?
If used effectively, internal events can be used to influence ‘business critical’ measures such as employee engagement, revenue and profit.
Our latest research, though, shows that many CEO’s are not convinced.
We believe that this comes down to a lack of hard proof that internal events are delivering long-term behavioural change or hitting other significant indicators of success.
INVOLVE Insight 2014 Survey
The INVOLVE Insight 2014 survey, published today (19/11/2014) spoke to 199 HR, Marketing and Communications Directors in large corporations with an events budget of over £100000, who are responsible for – or significantly involved in – the management of big internal conferences and events. We also spoke to 100 events managers in large corporations.
Our survey, based on research carried out in June and August 2014 by Illuma Research, found that almost half of all CEOs surveyed see internal events as a cost, rather than an investment. We also noticed a distinct disparity between the views of CEOs and employees:
“There is a clear disconnect between the CEO’s view of internal events and the views of the rest of the company.”
Jeremy Starling, Managing Director of INVOLVE
While only half of CEOs (51%) see internal events as an investment, two thirds of employees (67%) see their inherent value.Why can’t CEOs see the value in something that is clearly important to their workforce?
How Do We Create More Commitment to Internal Events?
Although events are used to influence ‘business critical’ measures, corporates are not consistently measuring whether they are achieving goals.
To guarantee the long-term growth of this industry and determine whether internal events are truly effective, we need to be able to use robust measurements to track ROI. Only once we have acquired that positive empirical evidence can we prove the value of internal events categorically.
Only 54% of directors claim to robustly measure the ROI of internal events. Event managers, meanwhile , claim to be more committed to measurement, with 62% saying they do so very robustly. Not surprisingly perhaps, those with larger events spends claim to be better at evaluation (61% as opposed to 46%).
Until we can increase these percentages, we won’t be able to convince CEOs once and for all of the true value of internal events for communication and employee engagement.
The INVOLVE Insight 2014 report also looks into what makes a good events manager, the traits of a good internal events agency and what is likely to change in internal events in the next 2-3 years.
To read the full report, click here, or if you would like to know more about how we can help deliver ROI on your internal events, please get in touch!