Keeping Your People Happy During a Pandemic: The Crucial Role of the Chief Happiness Officer in 2020

Plan Better EventsSmart Event TipsVirtual Events

Oct 27

If you’re feeling like keeping your team connected and engaged has never been more important—or more challenging, you’re definitely not alone. At Kennedy Events, we thrive on our relationships with our clients, vendors, and most importantly, with each other. Our remote team is based in locations from coast-to-coast—Vermont, New York, North Carolina, Florida, and of course, San Francisco—so we were luckier than most when working from home became the norm for 2020; we’ve actually been Zoom pros for years. That doesn’t mean this past year has been easy. While our team members were used to not seeing one other in person for weeks at a time, we always had our next live event to bring us all together again. When we witnessed the domino effect of live event cancellations, the sadness resonated deeply. There’s nothing we love more than running a live event on-site and our team of People People has definitely been missing the opportunities to celebrate post-event over late-night fries at the hotel bar. We also love our Indian takeout; something that always tastes best at the end of a long load-in day.

LIFE BEFORE: HAVING FUN TOGETHER

Kennedy Events actually has our very own Chief Happiness Officer (CHO) to make sure our team spirit is alive and well; even if we are far apart. Over the years, when we could meet in person, our CHO Marianne organized some truly memorable days. Would you expect anything less from a professional event planner?

Here are just a few of our favorite get-togethers:

Cooking class with duos tackling a dish under Chef Marianne’s expert tutelage
Wine-tasting adventures in Sonoma; chauffeur-driven for safety and style
Pontoon boat trip, surrounded by blue waters and skies
Game night with good old-fashioned board games and old fashioned cocktails
A dinner party hosted by Marianne at her home earlier this year provided a great opportunity for her to show off her professional chef skills; if only we had known it would be the last time we were able to gather together in the same room….

LIFE NOW: HAVING FUN FROM AFAR

While there’s obvious mourning around the fact that we won’t be able to gather in person for some time, it hasn’t stopped our team from pouring our creative juices into ways that we can gather remotely and stay connected with one another.

These feel-good moments cost us little to nothing, brought some much-needed joy to all of our lives, and provided opportunities to highlight our core values. It also gave us something to look forward to during our weekly team meetings. We’ve found that during the pandemic spending a little time each week off the topic of work and on the topic of team well-being has been one of the easiest ways to lift each others’ spirits and proved just how critical the role of CHO can be.

Here are just a few ideas from our meetings that might help create some much-needed levity during your next Zoom call:

Give the members of your team one minute to grab a sentimental object (anything from their home works—a gift from a grandparent, a postcard from a museum outing with Mom—then have each person share the object and the meaning behind it; think of it like a Zoom show-and-tell.
Provide the team with a “topic of the week”—like craziest travel memories, stories of beloved teachers, or the most influential person in their lives—then send everyone into smaller groups via Zoom’s breakout sessions feature to share their stories and memories before returning to the larger group to share each others’ answers with the whole group.
Create an opportunity for dressing up; who hasn’t gotten a little lax while working from home and attending meetings from the waist up? Give your team a chance to get creative with something simple, like a theme of animal prints or stripes, or dust off something a little fancier with a Sunday best or Gala theme. It’s an easy way to change things up in this “what-day-is-it” grind and it makes for some very funny screenshots.
Kick-off multiple weeks of praise by selecting a different team member each week who to be showered with tales of admiration, adoration, and favorite memories from their teammates. This was a great opportunity for our team to reminisce, sharing more than a few hilarious on-site memories from around the country. Definitely a team favorite and an opportunity to get those creative juices flowing, KE Project Manager Malia actually took it up a notch each week by creating a collage representing the honoree which she screen shared to the delight of the entire team. Not to be outdone, Marianne wrote her own lyrics to some classic tunes to honor more than one team member and even created a trio of outrageous limericks for another. The cherry on top was when the team turned the tables on Marianne by honoring her with a pre-recorded, custom video greeting by one of her favorite drag queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Are You In Need of Some Team Happiness?

This year has been filled with a lot of uncertainties, but one thing our CHO knows for sure is how she wants to celebrate the team after surviving this year of constant challenges: with a dynamic, virtual holiday experience.

What better way to show your team how much you appreciate them than by putting together a holiday party complete with custom-themed boxes delivered to their door before the event? With elevated snack boxes, complete with themed food, party favors, and themed cocktail (or mocktail) kits, they will be excited about the party before it has even begun. The evening will be filled with mixology sessions, entertainment, and games. We make the planning process as enjoyable and stress-free as the event itself. Want to learn more? Let’s get your party started!

MaRIANNE JACKSON

Marianne Jackson is a senior producer and the creative director at Kennedy Events. She specializes in making our client’s biggest design and decor dreams tangible while also ensuring that the event day menu is worthy of a Zagat mention. (Seriously, her taste and culinary connections are that good). Her fervor for adventure, cuisine, and aesthetics is visibly apparent in every event—whether in-person or virtual—she produces.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.