Five Tips for Planning Learn-at-Lunch Events

Below are five (5) tips to consider when planning a Learn at Lunch training event in your company. Each of the five tips include questions to ask before proceeding with event planning.  

1. Define the best time to hold your sessions.  When do most of your employees break for lunch 11-12, 11:30-12:30, or 12-1?  Choosing a time-frame that most prefer will help you get more people in the seats.
2. Decide how often you want to offer these sessions. Should training events be once a quarter or once a month?  Or do you have an immediate need to disseminate information or want to break it into multiple modules where weekly events over a short time period may be more appropriate?  Choosing a frequency of events will help you arrange for presenters and plan promotions.  If you choose to do weekly events, make them the same day each week so it easier for your employees to plan for.
3. Determine if you want variety of attendees or a targeted group.  Could you provide lunch or would it be better to tell your employees to Bring-Your-Own?  For a targeted learning, people will typically want to attend without extra incentives.  For a varied audience, the extra incentive a free lunch may get more people to show up.
4. Discover a location that will work best.  Depending on the audience size, can you find a room large enough with table space as well as seating?  If you are providing lunch, is there room to set-up an area for people to quickly move through when selecting their meal before the training portion begins?  If you are not providing food and expect a large crowd, can you bring food and drink into an auditorium-type space and do the seats provide a fold-up writing space that may be larger enough for notes and food?
5. Deliver meaningful content.  What topics are people do you plan to present?  Who can you get to present each topic in an interesting or unique way?  This is especially important for reviewing old material where you want people to see it differently and/or not be bored by hearing the same thing again.

Even though lunch and learns are more casual and shorter events than a training workshop, you still need to organize presenters, handouts, facilities, equipment, and food in advance.

*These same five suggestions above will work for non-profit associations who prefer to do lunch meetings instead of dinner events – just replace the word “employees” with “members” when reading the tips.