Organise a family day easily using CHEQ

More and more companies are organising family open days for their employees and their families. The idea is to create a stronger and more cohesive community and to shape and strengthen the company culture while everyone has fun at the event. This has a positive impact on employee and overall company performance. However, organising, managing and evaluating such a large-scale event as a family day, is a difficult task. Especially if you don’t have the right tools at your disposal to take the whole project through.

Fortunately, CHEQ can help you.

I. Manage your registration

When organising a family day, or any other corporate event, there are many situations where you need to know how many people you can expect to attend. CHEQ allows you to manage registrations for each event at different levels.

1. Venue rental for family day

If you are organising a family day or any other corporate event at an off-site location, you need to know how many participants you can expect. You need to find a rental venue according to the number of attendees as you need to comply with fire safety regulations. You can’t squeeze 250 people into a space designed for 200. However, renting a venue for 500 people when there will only be 250 is not an option either. This is a waste of money as the price of the rental depends on the number of seats it can accommodate.

2. Bus rental

Let’s say that the family day takes place at a location that requires travel and the company rents a bus. In order to ensure that everyone can travel comfortably, a bus or buses should provide enough seats for all attendees. Providing seats not only contributes to a comfortable journey but also to a safer ride.

You don’t know in advance how many extra people will come to your family day and how many of them will take advantage of your company’s travel facilities. That’s why it’s always a good idea to let your employees register their seats for the shuttle bus.

3. Catering

Determining the number of participants is also very important for catering. Obviously you want to have plenty of food and drink for everyone. However, you probably want to avoid ordering far more food and drink than you actually need. After all, that would be a waste of money and food. The company’s CFO would certainly not look kindly on that.

4. Programme registration

You can prepare several activities during the family day. Some of these can run simultaneously. In some cases you may need to limit the number of attendees per programme. Therefore it is important to know how many people have registered for each programme. This will help you avoid inconvenience, maintain security, and even give you an accurate picture in no time of which are the most popular activities that may be worth repeating.

5. Track staff changes

If your employees register for the family day and its programmes via the CHEQ app, you can easily keep track of headcount changes. If someone cancels their registration, you will be informed immediately. In addition, if a registration for an activity is cancelled, you can even send out a quick notification that a few slots have become available for the first applicant to take up. Of course, in such a case, be sure to send out a message informing employees once seats are full again.

As you can see, CHEQ allows you to easily manage the different levels of registration.

II. Food and drink offer compilation

CHEQ not only ensures that you order the right amount of food and drink from the caterer, but also let you know what should you order. We know that ordering a menu for a large and complex event can be challenging. It is difficult to predict what the attendees would like to eat and. Not to mention what the children would most like to get.

Even if everyone can eat everything, it is not easy to put together a food and drink menu. However, nowadays more and more people are suffering from food sensitivities and allergies. All this complicates the compilation of the menu. After all, we want to ensure that everyone can enjoy something delicious without any health problems afterwards.

Now you might be thinking that if you’re going gluten-free, lactose-free and vegan alongside the traditional food and drink offerings, you’ll be fine. Actually you can’t be 100% sure of it. You never know if any of your co-workers or their family members have some uncommon food sensitivities/allergies.

That’s why it’s so great to be able to quickly and easily ask your staff through CHEQ what food intolerances and/or allergies they have, what foods they can eat? What would they like to eat? You can even offer options to vote for. For example, what would they prefer an ice cream stand or a cotton candy maker? Which would you prefer: cola; juice or homemade lemonade?

Interviewing staff:

1. simplifies the preparation of the food and drink offer
2. involves them in the organisation, which gives them a good feeling, as it signals that their opinion is important, and as a result, they become committed
3. helps you not to exceed your budget for the menu

III. Polls

Put your ideas for family day up for a vote. This will involve your employees in the organisation which will further increase engagement. Plus, by involving them, you can really organise a family day or any other corporate event that will appeal to them.

I’ll give you a concrete example of how voting can be successfully used to organise family day activities.

If you’re thinking of treating the little ones to a family day out, but don’t know if

• face painting,
• a mini puppet show or
• pony riding

would be a better activity for the children, then let your colleagues vote. Let them decide what kind of activities should be part of the family day. This will also strengthen your employer brand.

Before you start the poll, contact the artists you want to nominate and check costs and dates with them. Once you have received the quotes, you should have a few days to make a decision. During this time, put the programme options to a poll among your colleagues. It’s a good idea to communicate about the poll and the programmes ahead of time, so that everyone has time to think through the options and discuss them at home with the children. You can do this by sending out a communication, or by creating a special sub-menu under the main Family Day menu. Here colleagues can find out more about the poll beforehand.

Vote differently

You can use voting not only when organising and selecting your programmes, but at any time during the event. For example, if you organise a drawing competition for children, you can offer employees the opportunity to vote for the best drawing. You could also organise a talent competition where children can showcase their singing, dancing or any other skills they have. In this case, in addition to the jury, the employees vote could help to choose the most talented child, or an audience prize could be awarded to the child with the most votes.

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and your resources. CHEQ is ready to manage and evaluate votes.

Plus, depending on the polls you launch during the event, you’ll have plenty of topics to post about for the next 1-2 months. After all, you need to communicate the results of the polls. So, for example, if you vote during the event for the best stand, best programme, best coordinator, etc. you can talk about all of this in the weeks after the event, not to mention you can also do a comprehensive satisfaction survey at the end of the day. So you can find out in no time what your colleagues were most and least satisfied with.

IV. Family Day quiz within CHEQ

It’s almost natural that during a family day, everyone focuses on what’s happening on the ground, taking part in the activities and games that are happening live on the spot. This is the real experience.

However, we should not forget about those colleagues who, for whatever reason, such as illness, a broken leg, etc., cannot attend the family day. They are part of the company, part of the team. They deserve to take part in the family day and their children should also benefit from the experience and prizes of the family day, even if they can only join in from a distance.

Allow them to join the event via CHEQ and play for prizes. Just create a quiz game that anyone can access on the CHEQ interface during the event. Make sure that all the information is also available within CHEQ so that the quiz can be completed.

At the end of the family day, draw some lucky winners from those who have completed the full quiz and give them a gift. This way, colleagues who, for whatever reason, were unable to attend in person can also benefit from the family day experience. They’ll be glad you’re thinking of them and will feel even more part of the team and the working community. This will also make them more engaged and of course they will talk positively about the company, thus strengthening the employer brand. At the same time, experience has shown that employees who show up in person are also happy to sign up for CHEQ if it means that the child has one more chance to win a gift.

V. On-site map

Whether the Family Day takes place on your company’s own premises or at an off-site location, you will need a site map. After all, different stations are likely to have different activities or attractions. It also helps to know where the nearest toilets or ice-cream stall is if you have a small child.

That’s why it’s so great that the site map is also easily accessible via CHEQ. Plus, there’s no problem if

• someone forgets to bring a paper event map
• the child has crumpled/ripped it up, or
• they left somewhere, while wandering between activities.

You just need to take out your phone, and you will immediately find out which is the shortest route to the next event location. There’s no need to run around in circles, and you can arrive on time for every programme.

What’s more, CHEQ can even be used to provide visitors with a special message or information at a particular location. So not only can you share interesting facts with your colleagues and their families, you can even invite them to a treasure hunt adventure game.

Map in another way

Some colleagues may prefer to travel by other means instead of a shuttle bus. Perhaps because it is difficult to arrive on time with small children. And rather than risk missing the joint departure, they may prefer to take the family by car or other means of public transport to the family day out. It is good to know what is the easiest and most convenient way to get to the venue.

You can easily share this information with your colleagues through CHEQ.

VI. Effective management of S.O.S situations

Unfortunately, no matter how careful and cautious you are when organising a family day out, unexpected and dangerous situations can always happen. It’s vital to be able to react quickly and get to all concerned quickly.

Through the CHEQ communication channel, it’s a piece of cake!

If, for example, your family day starts as an outdoor event but a big storm has damaged the venue, you can use CHEQ to let everyone know what to do immediately. You can quickly reorganise the day or change the venue. You can minimise the inconvenience of an unexpected situation.

Of course, it is not only useful when you need to contact staff immediately in case a storm has washed away the site.

Children can be running high and low, which can lead to minor accidents. It can be reassuring for parents to know that they can call for help and provide first aid to their children in a matter of seconds.

The CHEQ team supports you all the way

Reading through the options, you might be thinking, how can you do so much in CHEQ on your own?

The good news is that you are not alone. The entire CHEQ team is behind you, and we’re here to help you with whatever you need.

Some of the tasks you can count on us to help you with:

• creating a Family Day menu – with a design that fits the branding, yet stands out from the rest of the CHEQ menu items
• under the main Family Day menu, we will create all the additional submenus and processes you will need for the event
• at your request, the CHEQ team will be present at the event, where we will personally help you to sign up your staff

Contact us at to discuss the details!