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Company Retreats Get People Focused Research has shown time and again that taking healthy breaks and vacation actually boosts overall productivity. Below are staff retreat ideas for a productive and fun yeah, we said it offsite with your team. Before every staff retreat, we at Whole Whale distribute a survey to get a sense of what the team would find the most valuable. What topics are high priority for us to cover at this point in time?
What sessions have they found the most or least engaging in the past? Then, you can assign team members to lead the sessions they are interested in more on this below. We also use this pre-retreat survey to find out what snacks people will want, which can make or break a retreat only half joking. We also share a quick survey after the retreat to get feedback on what they did or did not find helpful, as well as staff retreat ideas for next year.
At Whole Whale, every person attending staff retreat can lead a session. This is an awesome opportunity for staff members to practice their presentation and leadership skills. Consider grouping a few people up or putting people in pairs and have them lead a session together. Each person will feel invested in the staff retreat if they are responsible for planning a portion of the time together. One reason for the mixed reviews is clear: Leaders often underestimate the complexity of preparing for and conducting a retreat.
This paper will address the various issues and actions you as a leader must address in planning and carrying out a retreat. Whether you are the leader of a very large and complex organization including hundreds of staff, or a team leader with 12 team members, we hope it can help you attain the vision described above, and ensure you that you have a successful, results-oriented retreat.
A retreat may have one, two or several purposes. In considering possible retreat purposes, you can as a leader consult with a leadership team or other key leaders — formal or informal — within your organization or team. No matter what the purpose for the retreat, everyone must understand that the retreat is not an end in itself.
It is simply one step among many in a continuing process to establish or sustain an effective organization or team. Retreat processes and results must be carefully planned to fit in with ongoing activities and the normal workload. And you as a leader must be very persistent in communicating about retreat goals, managing expectations, and ensuring follow up with any key retreat action items.
The most compelling reason for retreat failures is the lack clarity about purpose and what the organization or team is really trying to accomplish by having a retreat. As such, it is critical to share the purposes with participants and help set expectations about what the retreat intends to accomplish. You can choose to lead the retreat yourself, appoint a retreat committee, or to bring in an outside facilitator. If you decide on an outside facilitator, that person should be involved in the early planning stages.
The facilitator must have sufficient experience to tell which problems are significant and appropriate for discussion at the retreat. The facilitator must also sense when a problem has been discussed sufficiently, and to push for closure on it. The person needs to be an extremely good listener and an effective discussion leader — asking open-ended questions, and getting a variety of people participating and involved with responses.
Experienced and effective facilitators are bent on helping the organization achieve concrete results, and they see the retreat as only part of a larger organizational process. If a candidate — whether from outside or within the organization — does not exhibit this approach when interviewed, it is perhaps best to seek other facilitators. Once you decide on the facilitator, the next steps are: developing the agenda, deciding on who is to attend, creating expectations about the retreat for the team or organization, and finding a suitable site.
If you have a smaller organization or team — say people — it is not necessary to use all four methods. Rather, you could do a survey of the team, and use that data to help inform your choices about the final goals and agenda.
Or, if you have engaged a facilitator, you could have that person interview all or most of the staff, and use the data to help design the retreat. On the other hand, if you have a larger organization, the most effective approach is to modestly combine all four of the agenda-development methods spelled out above. These methods can provide very useful input and yet be economical, especially if realistic resource limits are provided. For example, doing an e-survey can give overall good broad input that can be very useful.
Given a good cross-section of participants, it is likely that only a representative sample need to be interviewed before the important issues become clear. A planning committee only needs to meet a couple of times to inform the development of the agenda.
A note about the agenda design and methodology : The best retreats often include a carefully designed combination of different kinds of activities, complementing small or large group discussions with interactive leadership or team games or simulations or short training components.
A good agenda usually features a mixture of these kinds of activities to help keep things active for all participants and, if designed well, learning and discussions from one kind of activity can contribute greatly to another activity. An experienced facilitator can help in the agenda design process to offer guidance on how best to mix different methodologies, how to allocate time over the retreat period, and how to make sure that different activities build on one another and move the group towards achieving the goals.
Whatever process you as leader end up choosing to help inform retreat design, a draft set of goals and an agenda can be finalized and shared within the team or organization four weeks or so in advance of the retreat.
This process will also be very useful in determining who is to participate for all or parts of the retreat. The decision about who to invite to the retreat depends largely on the purposes and retreat agenda. As part of the data gathering and agenda development process, decisions can be made about participation. In general, retreat participants can vary from the CEO and senior staff to all technical staff, or to everyone in the organization or office, or to a team leader and an intact work team.
If the goal is to make sure the leadership team reaches agreement on the direction for next year, then it might make sense to limit participation to just that group. If the goal is to increase staff input and participation, then it is logical to extend an invitation to a greater number of people.
Deciding who should come is often difficult. Some departments or functions are quite large — how many people can be at the retreat and still have it be productive? Ideally, between eight and twenty people work best. People will expect both talks and team building exercises. Create brochures or compile a document that provides necessary information on the area where the retreat will be held, including sections on restaurant recommendations or local landmarks people may be interested in seeing.
You can find all this by checking out review sites like Yelp and Google. Sometimes planning a corporate retreat is too big of a task for a single office manager to tackle on their own. This is particularly the case as your business becomes larger or if the retreat is longer or more involved.
Fortunately, there are a few companies that are focused exclusively on helping you organize the logistics of your retreat, streamlining the process significantly for you. Some great examples include the following:. Planning a corporate retreat can feel a little overwhelming, but having the right tools, resources, and planning processes at their disposal will make a world of difference.
All of this makes it possible to plan enjoyable and rewarding retreats that your entire staff will love, which is always the end goal to keep in mind. Interested in discovering more ways to increase employee engagement and improve team collaboration?
Check out our ultimate guide here! You're invited! Holiday Party. Team events. Marketing events. Virtual Picnics.
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