Planning an Employee Golf Event – Reasons and Tips

Somewhere there’s a bumper sticker that reads: a bad day golfing is better than a good day working – and who’s going to argue that – even if you don’t golf.

Planning a golf tournament is one great way to build morale for employees or to treat your customers. Like any event, it requires thought and attention to detail. So to help plan your next event, we put together a list of reasons why you should consider an employee golf outing and how to plan for all the details.

1. Why Golf?

• Whether you play or not, the outing itself is a great social and morale-boosting event. It gets people outside and removes the titles and hierarchy of the workplace. After all there’s something humanizing about seeing your CEO in shorts.
• You’re outside! Remember early release days or two hour delays when you were a kid? This is as close as it gets when you’re in the professional world.
• Learning takes place at events like this. Pair up executives with direct and indirect reports and all parties can start to socialize as people and usually some good things come out of such a relaxed way to chat.

2. Event Planning:

1. With all events consider your culture and values at the company. We’re being assumptive in this example, but always consider something that creates unique social opportunities and removes some normal boundaries – like the office walls.
2. Put out feelers. This can be as innocent as an individual employee getting water cooler buy-in or sending a company-wide email. Some companies use internal websites, wiki’s or community boards for posting.  Go with whatever is easy and most effective at your office
3. Put the event on the calendar at least 60 days in advance of the outing.
4. Use an easily accessible sign-up sheet like a google doc.
5. Have a Plan B or rain date.
6. Establish a payment system like wepay.com, paypal or something similar and let each employee cover any needed expenses with a deadline.
7. Pair up the groups and be prepared for last minute changes up until the last minute.
8. Leverage local courses that welcome the large-scale business and book the event during a weekday in the afternoon. Everyone gets their jobs done in the morning and still leaves time for a full round in the afternoon.
9. Surprise your employees with relevant promotional gifts – logo golf balls and or towels make a great gift for the day and they are relevant for the future too. Have these ready at registration in the parking lot or near the Pro shop.
10. Communicate the rules of the outing early – be upfront about alcohol use, attire, transportation and the format. Use a scramble to make it fun for people of all skill sets.

Last but not least, don’t be shy about over communicating.  We’ve found that many companies organize a golf event as a one-time event for fundraising and it naturally develops into an annual event with prizes, contests and social hours. So get outside, give some relevant promotional gifts and enjoy the spring – they tell us its coming in New England any day now!

Need help planning your next event, or just want some ideas on quality promotional gifts for your employees? Click the button below and we’ll be in touch right away.