We’ve all been there; you’re attending what’s supposed to be the company highlight of the year. Finally there, you’re just standing in the corner with the weird guy from finance talking about numbers that frankly don’t mean anything to you. Prosecco in hand slowly losing its fizz you start counting the seconds until this nightmare is going to be over… But not this time around! This guide to planning a corporate retreat will help you excel before, during, and after.
We’ve put together a guide to planning the perfect company retreat so the above situation won’t happen to your employees. Instead, you’ll find that time is flying and at the end of the event, everyone’s hugging goodbye, looking forward to seeing each other in the office soon. Mission accomplished!
Planning a corporate retreat isn’t something you do overnight, far from it. It requires a lot of preparation and an excellent schedule that’s going to keep everyone happy and busy when the day finally arrives. If you make sure you do the hard work beforehand you’ll also be able to relax and have fun yourself.
Don’t waste your time focusing on the wrong things when planning your getaway – follow this guide to planning the perfect company retreat instead!
Your Guide to Planning the Perfect Company Retreat
We asked our event experts how they’d go about planning a corporate getaway and collected their thoughts and ideas in this handy guide. To make it easy for you we divided the list into preparations, things to think about on-site, and what you should evaluate afterwards. This way you’ll know exactly when it’s time to do what.
Time to get started – we hope you’re as excited about your upcoming get-together as we are! Whatever type of company gathering you’re planning rest assured it will be a success if you simply follow these steps. Ready? Okay, let’s go!
Preparing for Your Retreat
The most important part of planning is of course the work you do beforehand. So firstly we’ll take you through all the things you should plan, think about, and prepare before the big day arrives. If you follow these steps you won’t have to get stressed either before or during the retreat.
1. Decide What Type of Retreat You Want to Host
This is unsurprisingly the first decision to be made and it might seem slightly overwhelming as there are so many good options out there. Start by making a list of options that you like, ordered from most preferred to least prefered. Some of our favourites include cookery team bonding and yoga retreats (not combined though, even if that might be quite the idea). Almost any activity can be a part of a retreat though so let your imagination run free.
If you’re struggling to come up with options you can start by thinking about what things your team enjoys to narrow it down slightly. Maybe you have a super active team that would enjoy a workout retreat, or if you’re all party animals a trip to Ibiza might be the one. What’s so convenient about choosing a full retreat for your company is that you can combine different activities as you’d like if you don’t go for a full package.
Try to remember that whatever activities you choose, the most important thing is that you all have fun. The goal is to connect through something that you all enjoy while changing it up by spending time together in a new environment. Don’t pick an activity that will make employees uncomfortable or insecure. It’s one thing to want to challenge your employees but you’ll want to make sure they don’t leave with less confidence than they came with. If you do choose to go with a slight challenge, remember to keep everyone motivated with positive vibes.
Our last disclaimer is to remember that a little friendly competition is great but if you have a super competitive team this might cause some bad moods. We’re not saying competing is always a big no-no but think twice before going for it.
2. Set the Budget
This is the boring part but it has to be done. Budgeting is everything when planning an event like this because if you don’t know what you’re willing to spend you don’t know when the price tag is getting unrealistic.
If you’re not the one budgeting for the event this is also very important. Make sure you check with finance how much money you have to spend so you don’t go crazy with the company card. Ifyou have a budget for the full events calendar, then you might want to decide how much money each event can cost beforehand so you don’t end up having to organise the Christmas party with just pocket money.
Make sure you know the entire budget and then break it down into what you have to spend on travel, accommodation, food, and activities. This will make the entire planning process much easier as you’ll know your limitations. If you’re outsourcing the planning of your company retreat this will be one of the first questions you’ll get, so make sure you know this early on in the planning process.
3. Book Everything in Good Time
Time is money they say but a lack of time isn’t just equal to being poor, it’s also the biggest obstacle to booking the coolest spaces. If you give yourself plenty of time you’ll be sure to have all the options in the world (quite literally).
This is extra important if you’re planning to book something during peak season. The timing of this depends on the location of choice. If you’re looking to go somewhere sunny, summer naturally is the peak for the best hotels. Weekends also tend to make prices skyrocket. Booking well in advance is essential year-round.
If you’re reading this guide and already failed on this point, no worries – there are plenty of cool spots that won’t be booked, you just need some inside information. We’d love to help you book your next company retreat!
You’ll also want to make sure you get the date in everyone’s calendars as soon as possible. People are, as you know, usually quite busy and nothing’s as disappointing as a company retreat where half the team can’t make it.
4. Specify Your Goals
When spending money on gathering the team (or anything really) you should always make sure you know what you want the end resuly to be. It doesn’t have to mean an immediate return on investment but you should at least know what you want the outcome to be in broad terms.
A lot of teams set the goal to reconnect during their company retreat, especially if they work remotely. This might be a hard one to measure but usually, it’s notable if people are bonding and having a good time.
If you want to fully focus on having fun that’s okay and even recommended but maybe you want to have a low-effort brainstorming session or a hackathon too. If you think you can include a more corporate activity while keeping everyone happy and relaxed this can be a fun way to make use of that off-site creative energy. The goal of this might be to get some new ideas for a specific problem you’re facing or to inject some creativity into things where you’re stuck in your ways.
If you want to set more concrete goals while keeping it laid-back you could set goals such as everyone in the company getting the chance to have a proper conversation. You could also ask people to evaluate when they’re going home and set the goal that everyone’s got something positive to say.
Goals for company retreats can rarely be super specific as the nature of having a good time is that it’s slightly intangible. The good news is that most of us have a good radar for when people are enjoying themselves – use it!
5. Make a Schedule
Once you’ve decided on a location you can start planning for real. Making a schedule is super important to avoid people being bored and under-stimulated. With that said you’ll want to plan for plenty of time without activities to relax too. Simply make downtime a part of the plan.
The activities don’t have to be work-related either, but a good piece of advice is to get some team bonding activities in there. Strengthening and challenging the team is never a bad idea and it doesn’t have to feel like work at all. One of the simplest team-building exercises is to just sit in a ring and count to 20. The team members have the common goal to get to 20 by saying one number at a time, one person at a time. If two team members both start counting at the same time you have to start over. Exercises like this make people work together and force them to understand each other better. It can also highlight group dynamics in quite an interesting way.
When making the schedule you should take the time to think about how long different activities will take. Planning the right amount of time for each activity is crucial to avoid awkward in-between times on the one hand, but you want to avoid having to stress too. Trust us when we say it’s going to be worth it to make a detailed schedule, the more detailed the better.
6. Final Touches
Finally when you’ve got everything planned it’s time to get the team excited. Send out some slack messages (or emails if you’re more old-school) to get the anticipation going. Maybe you have some secret activities planned that you can give little teasers to. It’s also a good idea to share the schedule with the team beforehand as people usually like knowing what to expect, this way they’ll also have plenty of time to work up some enthusiasm, making the whole thing even more enjoyable.
If you’re staying the night, make sure you sort out the sleeping arrangements beforehand and double-check everyone’s comfortable with them. If people have to share bedrooms you might have to prepare for some of them to pass on this one as it can make people a bit uncomfortable. It’s fully within their right but ideally, there are some single bedrooms for coworkers needing some privacy.
What to Do On the Retreat
Congratulations! All that planning of your corporate retreat has finally paid off and it’s time for the best part: the actual retreat!
The hard work you’ve put in beforehand will mean you can relax quite a lot yourself on the away days. You might still have to take some responsibility for everyone having fun but don’t worry, this will be a piece of cake if you’ve done your research. Time to take off!
1. Follow Your Schedule
If you’ve followed the above steps you’ll have a detailed schedule to follow, what a win! All you have to do is follow the schedule. It sounds simple but as events experts we know it’s never as easy as it sounds. A natural part of event planning is that on the day… things don’t always go as planned. But don’t worry, going with the flow and letting plans change slightly doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it can even be something positive.
Plan for some flexibility and think about what you can remove from the itinerary if you find yourself in the midst of some great creative energy. Plan for some extra activities that you can pull out your sleeve if things are speedier than you thought they would be. And of course, no harm in just letting people have some extra free time, we’re sure it will be much appreciated.
2. Make Someone the Fun Team Lead
It may sound a bit odd but giving someone the task to make sure everyone is having fun is always a good idea. This might ensure you share responsibility in a good way so you can all make sure you also have fun. If someone is making sure you stick to the schedule it makes sense for someone else to make sure the team is happy. Split responsibilities to ensure everyone gets their fair share of relaxation too.
This is a perfect job for the head of staff or just the most charismatic team member. Most teams have a natural person for this job – who’s your fun team lead?
3. Sort Out the Sleeping Arrangements
So, you’ve got your head of schedule and your head of fun but before you get started with any of the activities you should sort out your sleeping arrangements. People will probably want some downtime in their rooms and get a change of clothes before it’s time to get going.
Double-check that everyone’s rooms are living up to expectations. If there are any issues it’s always a good idea to take care of them right away. Get all logistics out of the way before the fun starts.
4. Start With Some Icebreakers
Ice breakers are a great way to well… break the ice. It doesn’t have to be too complicated at all, you just need to help people get a little relaxed. An easy one is two truths and a lie where everyone simply tells (yeah you guessed it) two truths and a lie. Then the team gets to guess which one’s the lie. This one is so simple, doesn’t require any preparation, and usually doesn’t make people uncomfortable. You’ll also get to find out who’s the best liar!
5. Have Fun
All that’s left now is just to simply have fun! It’s the simplest task of all of them, especially if you’ve followed the previous steps. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy what you’ve created!
After the Retreat
You might think that your work here is done but it’s only just begun. There’s more to planning a corporate retreat than the preparations. A good company event should always be followed up in a good way. Try these three simple steps to evaluate the success of your retreat.
1. Evaluate Your Goals
If you set goals for your retreat you should be able to see if you reached them. The more concrete the easier it will be to see the results but even vague goals can be a good way to measure success.
Try to be objective if your goals are more subjective. This might be easier said than done but it’s always more useful to find out where there’s room for improvement than where you’ve done all things right.
2. Let Employees Have Their Say
The best way to evaluate with almost no effort is by simply sending out a questionnaire to everyone attending. Make it all anonymous to get the real dirt on your event. Encourage everyone to be really honest because the goal is to get some useful constructive feedback for next time. You might be able to get some insights that’ll help you get more value for your money next time.
3. Look at Costs and if You Stuck to Your Budget
Last but not least – evaluate the budget! This might not be the most fun part but it will at least be easy, all you have to do is check that you didn’t overspend. If you did, make sure you have a proper look at where the money went so you can learn something for next time.
All that’s left for us to do now is wish you good luck as you’re all set to plan your company retreat! Don’t forget we’re here to help if you need some help with planning the perfect getaway for the team.
