Don’t let your month of March end in madness due to work stress. Loosen up the workload by getting into a fun, competitive vibe. A great way to get employees engaged and interacting is March Madness. The best part is everyone can be involved, whether in the office or working from home.

March Madness is famously coined as the annual NCAA college basketball tournament generally held throughout the month of March. According to NCAA.com, they’ve tracked over 20 to 25 million total March Madness brackets completed since 2016. Participants love to fill out their brackets yearly in hopes of deciding which team will win it all. Nothing like having school pride or even beginner’s luck on having the best predictions round after round. There’s no hesitation especially when there’s hefty wagers involved.

March Madness tournaments were once only enjoyed amongst friends and families. However now, the celebrations have made their way into the office. Many employers set time aside for bracket set ups, themed potlucks and/or turn the breakroom tv’s on to stream games throughout the day.

There are many ways to ensure to celebrate March Madness or similar events throughout the year. Multiview added a new initiative last year to create a consistently enjoyable work environment called the Social Committee. Chatting with Luke Foote, a member of Multiview’s Social Committee, he discussed his role with the committee as Monthly Event Planner. In addition, great ideas to celebrate not only March Madness but the overall importance of creating a great work environment.

Overall, we wanted to increase employee engagement. Happiness may be too broad of a word. But that’s what we wanted to ensure. We set out to make it more than just a place you work at but make it fun. Make it cool to engage with others, coworkers.

A lot of planning! We gear our calendar around different holidays. We try to incorporate the various staff and employees in mind when planning. We want to make it diverse and inclusive to everyone. We want to make sure everyone can feel involved. For example, coming up with things to do for National Stress Day was a great idea this year. Also, Back to School Drive because we wanted to give back to our friends and families. As employees, we know teachers as friends and family members. Also, locally to give to teachers in our community.

Besides putting on more social events throughout the year, we’ve seen a higher attrition rate. Especially with our sales staff as we have a lot of them. It really does make it enjoyable for the staff for them to want to stay and come into the office every day.

This year, we [Social Committee] didn’t have a huge play in March Madness. As many of the departments and teams, took the initiative to set up brackets within their teams. I’ve seen them decorate their desks. Which is great! We shouldn’t be the only ones coming up with ways to make sure everyone is having fun. It’s a collaborative effort. I love seeing it. I need to make a bracket myself.

From making sure to celebrate different holidays, no matter the culture. It is important to show company cultural appreciation. Not just random holidays. It’s great to give support and acknowledgement of the different cultures, backgrounds, and nationalities we have here.

Last year, the non-sales Holiday luncheon was my favorite event. It’s our biggest and last event of the year. There are so many moving parts to it. It’s an offsite event. I mean we are a large company and there’s seating charts and name cards. There’s a lot to planning events, it can be a long process. We had it at the hotel ballroom. It was a big success. I had the role of making sure to arrive early and make sure that all the details were put together for the tables. We had special plating and gift ornaments for each seat. It was a nightmare of making sure name cards were in the right order and place.

We work at a large company. There’s a lot [employees] in our Dallas office. Our main challenge is ordering food and making sure there’s enough for everyone. For example, we had a wing order for the Super Bowl event. We ordered so many wings. Had to think about ensuring variety for all. Trying to offer more for dietary restrictions. That is one of the largest things to overcome. Making sure everyone feels welcomed.

A great way we try to make sure there’s enough food is we rely a lot on the RSVPs. That helps to ensure we plan accordingly.

My personal favorite event that I’m most looking forward to is the Golf Tournament. We had only one golf tournament last year. It was in November. But now we are doing two this year, one in May and one in November. The best part about playing in the golf tournament is seeing your coworkers compete and it not be work related. It’s fun to see a little bit of trash talking. We did something funny last year having people mic’d up throughout the tournament.