Retirement celebrations and Employee Recognition events

An Interview with Beth Goldenburg, CSEP

Some thoughts about how to plan retirement celebrations and employee recognition dinners in a recent interview.

BHG: For employee recognition dinners and things like that, there’s a lot’s of things you can do to recognize the person.

Number one, personalize it, if it’s a retirement celebration or dinner, then perhaps have a menu based on the retiring persons likes and dislikes. There’s nothing more offending than giving a great steak dinner to a retiree who's a vegetarian.

EMZ: Ouch!

BHG: You know I’ve heard that as a a last minute ouch when they’ve had a nice speaker whose Kosher and they have no Kosher food provided. Know your speaker-know your keynote speaker, know your retiree.

If you’re going to honor somebody, honor them respectfully. Know what their likes and dislikes are.

If its someone who doesn’t like being the center of attention make it a low key, elegant brunch or something like that with a nice environment instead of high energy entertainment which wouldn’t go for someone like that.

Some retirement celebration ideas for the retiree who loves the center of attention: Having a roast would be great, having an onsite caricature made and given to the person would be awesome... Having a cabaret about that person’s life and work experience would be nice to do. Like a little show about that person and customize the song and dance. That would be a really nice tribute.

Make sure that they invite family members for that person.

Retirement celebrations and employee recognition events: Time considerations for planning.

Other recognition events, if you’re going to recognize somebody don’t wait until the last minute to plan gifts and awards. Because last minute gifts and awards tend to either exceed your budget or make you look cheap.

EMZ: Do you have any general ballpark ideas as to what your time-line should be to prepare a retirment celebration or other employee recognition event?

BHG: The event in general you want to secure... if you have the luxury of a year’s planning, that’s great, most people don’t.

EMZ: Right.

BHG: So your first priority is to secure your venue.

EMZ: OK

BHG: The next thing is to secure your entertainment. At that time you might want to send to your guest list a “save the date” postcard and that will buy you a little time to create the invitation, menu, and the other particulars...umm, the invitations should go out at least six weeks prior to the event. The menu can be set ...

The first thing you need to do, I guess I’m going out of order, is set a budget. And stay within that budget so that when you are setting the menu and you are taking care of the invitations you know exactly how much you have to spend.

Because some entertainment is going to be more costly than others. If you want a piano player you can’t assume that the piano player is going to bring a piano, you might need to rent a piano. Along with that they might need microphones and speakeers and a whole sound system. So you might want to explore that well in advance.

And be realistic with your entertainment budget. If you want WOW! entertainment you won’t get WOW! entertainment with $500. So explore what you want. Send out some requests for proposal to help determine your budget.

And then once you send your invitations six weeks prior, are you setting an RSVP date? Are you allowing time to do any follow up calls for people who have not responded.

You probably want to do a pre-event conference with the caterer, the entertainment, and the site at least a week before the event.

And then follow up.After the event do a little feedback, conference call or in-face meeting to see how things went.

Contingency Plans

Also come up with some contingency plans early on.

If you’re doing an outdoor tented event, what are you going to do if it snows? Are you going to have heat? Are you ordering your tent with side walls? Because if it rains and it’s a blowing rain, you’re not going to have happy guests.

If you’re doing a garden picnic are you tenting at all? So early on you should do your contingency plans.

Gifts and awards

EMZ: Now you did mention preparing gifts for retirement celebrations and employee recognition events. Where does that fit in the time-line?

BHG: Gifts, ummm, gifts you probably want to look at least a couple months before. That way you need time for delivery...you want to allow at least eight weeks before the event.

EMZ: OK.

BHG: That way if you want to personalize anything you’ll have time. And that will all change around holiday season, you’ll need to allow more time. You always have to add a month to everything around holiday time.

EMZ: Including booking your venue?

BHG: Booking your venues, you’ll have to allow at least a year in advance or else you won’t get your venue.

EMZ: That sounds like excellent advice, not only for retirement celebrations and employee recognition events, but for any kind of event.

Beth H. Goldenburg, CSEP is president of DJC Entertainment.

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