Sertifi Digital Olympics
What do you do when the 2020 Summer Olympics get canceled? You create your own, and go for the gold!
Sertifi has a history of hosting some fun summer events, and we weren’t going to let the pandemic stop us this year. We assembled a rock-star committee to plan this year’s Summer ‘In-ing’ and made it one to remember.
Once we decided to host our own Olympics, we needed to figure out how to make it possible with everyone working from home. “It’s hard to plan any virtual event, especially one with company-wide participation. Some hurdles included what events would be realistic on a virtual platform, what would resonate as entertaining and fun events to all employees, and not knowing what level of participation people are able and willing to commit,” stated Carly Kaluzna, a Customer Success Manager and member of the Sertifi Employee Advisory Committee.
The struggle of feeling connected while sitting at home wasn’t the only challenge ahead of us. We also needed to create hype and excitement each week. We started a month in advance, with a light-hearted video to announce the games, and then, slowly released information about the events in the weeks after that.
Our first focus for planning was on making the games simple and easy to explain in order to have high participation. Each of the planning committee members focused on one event of their choice to organize all of the logistics.
Next, we assigned every employee to a team, including leadership. It would be up to the individual if they wanted to opt-out, but they didn’t need to do anything to opt-in. To help ease calendar management, we hosted our events over the lunch hour each day. That way, no one would need to stay logged in after work hours to participate, and our international team members could join in the fun as well.
The first assignment for each team was to create a team name, appoint a team captain, and select a team flag and anthem. We used that information to create a video for our Opening Ceremony event, ‘The Parade of Teams,’ which was our take on the Parade of Nations. We had some opening remarks by our CRO, Joe Flynn, a masterfully edited Pass the Torch video, and lastly, held a virtual bonfire to signify the start of the games. Games kicked off on Tuesday, starting with a Team Scavenger Hunt. On Wednesday, we hosted a Field & Fitness Day, including several fitness challenges and Minute-to-Win-It games. Thursday was our own Sertifi Jeopardy game day complete with our in-house Alex Trebek, and Friday ended with a Pictionary game and Closing Ceremony complete with a recap video and happy hour.
We achieved our goal which was to shake up the day-to-day grind that comes with working from home and inject some silliness into everyone’s day. “The games were a huge success, and I was amazed at the participation. The Scavenger Hunt on the first day of games was awesome. It had me running all over my house looking for items and taking pictures, and I even got my roommates involved,” stated Marco Alvarez, Customer Success Specialist, and Olympic Team Captain.
In the end, it didn’t matter who won gold or what team took home the winner’s trophy. It was about embracing our ‘Enjoy the Journey’ company core value, connecting with different team members, and of course, having a few good belly laughs. The 2020 Sertifi Digital Olympics wasn’t just a successful virtual event for our company. It’s now the ‘Gold Medal Standard’ for staying connected in a remote working world and will forever change how we plan events.
Interested in seeing how we’ve stayed connected when we’re all remote? Check out our Instagram