Backcountry.com is one of the world’s largest online outdoor gear retailers, so it makes sense that their employee appreciation party would be more than a little bit ‘wild.’
The setting was Utah Olympic Park, and the plan was to take advantage of the activities like alpine sliding and freestyle ziplining, but the weather had other ideas. A massive rainstorm had the city under its grip the morning of the party, and organizer Sara Hutchison and her team were considering pulling the plug.
Being Adaptable
“Kim came early with her TapSnap to set up for the event, and we were deciding what to do about the weather. She hopped in and was part of the team, helping us decide to continue, and just went with it,” says Sara, who is Backcountry.com’s HR Employee Engagement Lead, otherwise known as the Director of Fun.
Instead of the backdrop of the Park’s ski jump for the TapSnap photos, Kim was in the children’s tent, along with the face-painter, balloonists and the boa constrictors.
“Right next to TapSnap was another Kim with her cold-blooded friends. It was a show of reptiles,” says Sara.
Live Boas!
Live snakes, tarantulas and other creepy crawlies were on hand with a local business, Kim’s Cold-blooded Creatures http://www.kimscoldbloodedcreatures.com, and made for some very wild TapSnap pictures. The combination was such a hit that Kim plans to offer this as an add-in for clients.
After the event, Sara emailed a link with all the photos to her employees, and she’s going to save the photos of snakes to use for special occasions like when someone gets promoted.
Bringing Employees Closer Together
Because it was an employee appreciation event, TapSnap was there more for phototainment rather than social media promotion.
“We know that people that hang out together tend to stay longer at the company,” says Sara, and TapSnap is one way to encourage interaction and bonding at employee appreciation events.
She adds that Backcountry.com is exploring an internal social platform for their intranet, and would use something like TapSnap to post photos after company parties like this one.
“We live in a social media world where people like to post and share things,” says Sara. “TapSnap makes it easy to share event pictures. And I love you can write on the screen. There were some very witty comments on the pictures with the snakes.”
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