Are You Planning Company Retreats This Year?

In this article learn about our tips to save you time, money, and stress.

You have landed the privilege to plan a leadership retreat, or an all-hands retreat for the entire company. With limited available information about the goals, budget, and expectations for the offsite, the task at hand may be seem daunting and hard to manage. Perhaps you have never planned a retreat before, you've merged with another company, or the team has grown considerably since the last time you've organized an offsite. In this blog post, you can find out how to save time, money, and stress and deliver an unforgettable and a productive retreat for your organization.

Determine The Goal Of Your Offsite

First things first, get clear on your retreat's goal. Whether it's team-building, strategic planning, skill or product development, or celebrating a major milestone, pinpoint your top two or three objectives to keep things focused. This goal will guide your planning and ensure the retreat aligns with your organization's objectives. It will also help you budget, choose a destination and venue, and measure the event's success. Define key details with your decision-makers early on to avoid delays and dead ends.

When we work with clients, we tailor the proposals based on:

• Agenda structure
• Ideal locations and venues based on the type of the event
• Ease of access and cost of travel
• Overall (and per-person) budget with a detailed breakdown
• Team’s dietary preferences, travel needs, and activity interests

Find the Destination and Book Your Venue

Choosing the right destination and venue is crucial. If the goal is to celebrate a milestone or a succesful year - choose a seaside location where people can relax, celebrate and bond in a relaxed atmosphere. If you are doing a let’s say 3-day hackathon, choose a space suited for long hours of collaborating, but also for inspiration, reflection, and relaxation - such as a mountain house.

If you plan to work on strategy, product development, or similar – it makes no sense organizing the retreat in a beach hotel, having everyone longingly gazing through the window. Choose a remote isolated location for people to focus, and ideally do a full buyout not to mix with other guests.

Expect to spend half of your budget on accommodation and travel, making this your most significant decision. We offer full service retreat planning and execution services, but if you're going solo on this, scrutinize contracts for hidden costs and negotiate everything. When you have identified and chosen the location and venue, share the exciting news with your management. Once they approve, proceed and share it with everyone else!

Do a Pre-Retreat Survey

Like you seek early feedback from your management, do the same with your team. Send out a pre-retreat feedback form to gather info on:

• Dietary preferences/allergies
• Travel sensitivities/accommodations
• Preferred activities (active or relaxed)
• Preferred agenda items (what type of content they want)
• Other logistics (e.g., if they need assistance in securing visas, travel insurance, and similar)

This is also a great opportunity to align the offsite with your business objectives. Gathering this info beforehand and again after the retreat will provide valuable data for evaluating the ROI. Tools like Google Forms, Typeform, SurveyMonkey, or similar make this easy.

Create an Agenda to Suit the Goal

Creating a deliberate agenda is key to a successful retreat. Collaborate with your company’s leadership to balance activities, workshops, and downtime. Use the pre-retreat feedback to tailor activities that accommodate different physical abilities and interests.

One of the most important, usually neglected and undervalued things is downtime – plan for free time, although cramming the schedule seems tempting. Allow people to bond in a laid back setting. Think about the introverts in your team (IT also stands for Introvert Teams) - they will appreciate having personal time to recharge the batteries before embaring on an another scheduled event.

One good tip from our side is to have the balance of work and fun set at 70/30, that’s how you can keep the attendees engaged throughout the retreat. Include keynotes, as well as pre-arranged breakouts to encourage cross-department collaboration, and choose-your-own-adventure options.

Consider bringing in outside speakers and facilitators, especially if you want to focus on enjoying the experience or lack experience in running specific workshops. A keynote speaker can make the event more engaging, especially if you allow for a Q&A session afterwards.

Draft a Comprehensive Budget

Define a balanced budget for your offsite and manage your team's time wisely. As a People Leader, you'll handle budgeting, tracking expenses, and vendor management. Find cost-effective options without sacrificing quality.

For instance, volunteering can be a budget-friendly, unique shared experience with great photo opportunities. If you can rely on support from an assistant, someone from operations, or from somebody in an outside company, your task will be to guide all the steps and parameters. This way, others can research and present options for quick approval, saving time and ensuring viable choices.

Keep Track of Logistics and Communication

Keep everyone informed about retreat details – the agenda, travel arrangements, accommodations, and pre-retreat preparations. This includes the perticipants, the venue, the vendors, finance team, and leadership, ensuring all objectives are met. For instance, at OnsiteHub we create a personalized dashboard for each retreat that we organize with all the crucial info available to everyone in real-time. If someone's plane is late, the transfer company will know immediately. If the meeting point or time has changed, eveyone will be notified of the latest relevant info. Need to conduct a quick poll or survey regarding an activity - done in no time! Where's that document I need to fetch? Oh, in the repository, of course.

Employees will appreciate knowing travel policies, plus-one rules, time spent with the team vs. personal time, and where to share photos or notes. Ensure vendors have all the details and emergency contact info. Utilize communication tools like chat, email, and live meetings to share information and address concerns as they arise, but avoid using too many channels at once. We found out that centralised systems like Slack work the best.

Document a script for contingencies like illness or delays. Over-communicate to keep everyone informed. If you just don’t have the time to handle all these things, we also specialize in Destination Management – so give us a holler!

Facilitate and Coordinate the Offsite

When using keynote speakers or session facilitators, coordinate with them to share their personal insights and thoughts, in order to create inspiration in others. Provide an itinerary so they know where to be and when, unless you have event staff for this.

If you take on the role of the facilitator, keep the schedule in mind and hold everyone on track. Ensure you meet business objectives while allowing time for activities, meals, and breaks. If issues arise, stay calm, use break time to catch up, and outsource problem-solving to support staff or companies. Stay positive, and your team will follow your lead.

Review and Adjust Your Budget and Review Key Takeaways

After the offsite is done, do not forget to evaluate its success and gather feedback from participants. Ask the participants to submit their post-retreat feedback forms to capture the general feedback. Now you will be able to compare the metrics with your pre-retreat survey results.

Document key takeaways from the break-out sessions in the project management tool of your choice, and be sure to follow up with the stake-holders. Check all expenses, the received invoices and pay vendors promptly. Finally, take a moment to celebrate—you have successfully planned and executed a truly memorable retreat.

Set a Regular Schedule for Future Retreats

Retreats can maximize employee retention, that is a fact. In that manner your employees’ engagement and bonding is a direct result of retreats. Now, you can set a schedule for your retreats – allowing for advance planning and improvements based on received feedback. 

This increases the ROI for each offsite. With a regular schedule, you can also plan for different people to handle certain responsibilities – might that be you, your team members, or an outsourced company like OnsiteHub. Planning an offsite takes effort, but with the right tools, you can save time, money, and stress. And if you need any help, just reach out!