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Goodway Group held a fun, engaging, and successful hybrid event for their all-employee summit. Read on to see how they gave their virtual employees just as an amazing time as those who attend in-person.
Goodway Group is a leading data-driven and technology-enabled digital media and marketing services firm that offers companies holistic digital marketing strategies. They’ve been fully remote since 2008 but enjoy coming together for their bi-annual all-company summits. Pre-pandemic, employees would attend in person. However, in 2021, Goodway Group had to change up its event strategy and plan for a virtual and in-person event experience.
💼 Industry: Marketing
👯 Company Size: 450+ Employees
📍 Location: U.S. (Remote)
Maria Villella and another Goodway Group employee both worked on planning Goodway Group’s 2021 winter summit.
Maria is a Sales Ops Coordinator for the company and worked closely with Confetti when planning the shippable experience portion of the summit. The other Goodway Group employee co-lead the planning for the 2021 winter summit.
We had the opportunity to speak with both of them about their Confetti experience!
At the end of 2020, Goodway Group faced an especially unique challenge (that’s since become more common): hosting a hybrid all-company summit that gave in-person and virtual attendees something special, memorable, and fun.
“If you're remote you have to get your people together. But for the summit, there were people who wanted to attend but remain virtual. So, how do we keep those people engaged? We needed to figure out experiences that felt completely different from the day-to-day.”
-Goodway Group
For this to happen, Goodway Group wanted:
Thankfully, Confetti was there to lend a hand. 🙌
The Confetti platform offered exactly what Goodway Group needed:
“I think it's important to have experiences that get you out of your every day and to be doing something hands-on. And that’s something that I really love about Confetti.” The summit's planner then went on to note: “Plus, the experience library is huge! We were able to book unique classes for all the virtual components of the summit, and will even be able to offer entirely new virtual experiences for our next one.”
Due to a spike in COVID cases, Goodway Group made the difficult decision to push their summit back a month to keep their employees safe.
For event planners, unexpected scheduling issues can turn up a whole load of problems: vendor cancellations, drastic itinerary changes, and a sharp hit to morale.
But Confetti met Goodway Group with the empathy, understanding, and flexibility they needed.
"I was blown away at how quickly Confetti was able to act. We had to reship a lot of the materials, especially for the Latin American Cooking and the Mixology classes. Confetti did a tremendous job accommodating our date change — it went so smoothly for us!"
-Maria
For Goodway Group, it was crucial the company-wide summit gave every attendee a memorable experience. They wanted their virtual folks to feel included, involved, and connected, even from afar.
"We were trying to do something out of the ordinary, so for the virtual folks, it's not just another week at home — they're doing something special, too. And our Confetti experiences gave us that. It's not a normal work day when you're in a Candle Making Class with your coworkers, or learning to make cocktails at noon."
-Goodway Group
And when all was said-and-done, the feedback Goodway Group received from their virtual team let them know: mission accomplished.
“When the summit ended, I was getting pinged by people in the company that I didn't know letting me know what an amazing time they had in their Confetti experiences,” Maria said.
Goodway Group also noted a nice improvement in their employee engagement thanks to Confetti!
"We definitely saw an improvement in employee engagement. Teams were able to engage and explore, whether it was in the art class or cooking class. People really enjoyed the hands-on experiences because Confetti did it so well. And Confetti will be my first choice when we do this again."
Maria even took a moment to highlight an event she attended: “I did the Watercolor Painting Class myself and loved it. Everybody in my class did,” she said. “The instructor was great and even the not-so-artistic people made something that had everyone saying, ‘Wow, that looks beautiful!’”
It’s no secret event planning has its fair share of challenges, and giving both virtual and in-person employees something to remember adds another layer of difficulty.
But Confetti was happy to help Goodway Group with the heavy-lifting, so long as it meant their hybrid team could have a summit worth remembering. And, by the looks of it, that’s exactly what happened.
“Confetti gave us exactly what we needed. All-in-all, it was an amazing experience.”
-Maria
