In 2021, Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace reported that only 36% of U.S. employees felt engaged at work. Two years later, that percentage is now just 15% of workers. Help boost company engagement with a T-shirt design contest to help increase engagement at your own workplace. Keep reading to learn how a contest can help create a supportive work environment, and find out what you’ll need to make it happen.
Why Run a Company Contest?
Building hype around the event will encourage staff to talk to each other about the T-shirt competition, and it will also give them something to look forward to when the winner is announced. Another benefit is that these are more affordable than many other kinds of company parties that typically cost about $75 per person. By comparison, printing custom shirts for your business can cost $20-30 for smaller orders and are even cheaper per garment for larger orders.
But the best part of a T-shirt contest is that it’s easy for people to participate. Team members don’t have to be artists to know what looks good or what their colleagues like to wear, and with the right tools, you can make the design process easy and accessible for everyone.
How to Hold a T-Shirt Design Contest
The fact is that some personnel will need to be reassured that they can join in on the fun. They may worry that the design process will be too difficult for them. Luckily, intuitive tools like BlueCotton’s Design Studio make it so anyone can create a shirt design and enter the contest! Built-in features are labeled clearly to make it simple to add text, clip art, shapes and even images.
Your first step to running a competition is to decide how it will work. Some T-shirt design contest rules to consider include:
- Who can enter? Are teams joining together, or can individuals participate?
- What counts as an entry? Make it clear whether designs must be completely original or if design templates can be incorporated, such as those in our Design Ideas
- Choose a deadline. Give people a reasonable amount of time to create and submit their company shirt design. Consider adding a grace period too, in case a staff member experiences an illness or other unforeseen circumstances.
Once those are decided, put someone in charge of it. While it’s a low-maintenance event to boost employee engagement, someone should still be responsible for managing it. They will have to promote the shirt contest to the staff, collect the entries and organize a panel to choose a winner, or do so themselves.
To make it more meaningful to your company, coordinate your competition to line up with an annual event you already host, a milestone for the business or another date or occasion that’s special to your organization.
Keep the Engagement Going
Don’t stop there: Make the company contest a regular celebration to show staff you’re invested in the culture at your workplace. This will give veteran workers a sense of community and tradition, and they’ll be excited to tell newcomers about the design competition.
By creating an environment where employees have something beyond work to discuss and collaborate on, you’ll be helping them to connect more deeply to your business. Get creative, have fun and let your team know they’re appreciated with this great event!