Year-end seminars are a turning point in the development of a business’s activity. Total Holdings gathered 500 participants at their annual R&D department seminar. What are their objectives for this plenary?
- Identify the challenges for the coming years
- Free the word and let everyone ask their questions
- Energize presentations throughout the plenary session
- Collect feedbacks on this seminar type
Total Holdings, with the help of Beekast tool and teams, has devised an innovative event to achieve these objectives!
Identify key issues and topics for the coming year
Total wanted to create an atmosphere that would encourage discussion and create a break with everyday life by opening the plenary with an ice-breaker. The ice-breakers are simple activities that aim at creating a trust climate for discussions and bringing participants closer together.
See our article for innovative ice-breaker ideas
Total has chosen a Word Cloud. The organizers asked a question to identify the challenges and obstacles that everyone faced: “What challenges have you set for the coming year?” Participants can answer the question using words (one at a time) or even emoticons, to create a live cloud of their answers: the more submissive a word is, the bigger it gets compared to the others!
Participants submitted many words (or emojis) and laughed with their neighbors as they imagined the answers they would submit: mission accomplished. With over 600 words, the final rendering was impressive and helped the speaker introduce his topic based on this result.
Free speech and reap all those questions that burn the lips
Shyness and modesty remain obstacles to public speaking, in which many employees refuse to ask their questions. For Total, the objective was to maximize the number of questions asked and provide a maximum number of answers while taking into account reality: limited time!
In order to gather all the questions from its audience, Total encouraged its participants to use the Message Wall. The message wall enables you to send comments or questions using the app or by SMS, in order to increase the number of questions asked. Using the like system, the audience has prioritized the questions and the speakers simply had to read them before providing answers that really interested the audience. Obviously, in order to highlight these questions, they were projected on a large screen!
Almost 40% of the participants asked their question, some 200 questions asked! And with over 900 likes on the messages, the Total team and its speakers were able to sort through the questions and answer the most relevant ones during the Q&A periods.
Facilitate the plenary sessions and give dynamism and rhythm to the presentations
When presenting the strategic objectives, Total believed it was important for communication to be both bottom-up and top-down. In order to energize the plenary and keep the guests attentive, the speakers presented the objectives and challenges and then gathered the participants’ opinions on the vision, strategy and the program to be implemented in their opinion.
To promote bottom-up communication and engage its audience around the issues presented by its speakers, Total used several polls activities. Polls, whether fun or not, relax the atmosphere and enhance a sense of belonging.
A public consulted is a playful public! At Total, their audience’s participation in the survey enabled them to gather strategic information to meet their objectives, but also to involve and keep the audience engaged. These results enable stakeholders to build a long-term project supported by a whole assembly of employees involved in this approach.
Collect feedback from employees on this seminar format
At the end of their seminar, the organizing team chose to ask all participants to answer a satisfaction questionnaire. Thanks to this questionnaire, Total showed that they were listening to their participants and, at the same time, gathered a great deal of feedback on the seminar’s proceedings.
For Total, it was important to gather the opinions of its participants on the event. They have therefore chosen to share a Form as soon as their event closes so that participants give a feedback.
The organizing team shared the satisfaction questionnaire at the end of the seminar and decided to leave it open for several days so that latecomers would also have time to do so. This choice paid off as 92% of participants responded!
Federating your assembly with pictures
With the desire to maximize interactions during their seminar, Total proved that it was essential for them to place people at the center of their event. To conclude their seminar on a friendly note, they chose to close their event with an innovative “Family Picture”.
Total has chosen to use the Selfie Wall. The participants sent one or more photos, which scrolled directly onto the giant screen before forming a mosaic in perspective with the Total logo.
Total chose to launch the activity during a break. The participants had the opportunity to do a selfie alone, in pairs or with their team. Many selfies were sent and the final result was shared with the collaborators in the message of thanks.
These activities are designed to help you collaborate and energize your events by involving your audience. Free the word at the start of your seminars to get the most out of your event!
