A Guide to Planning the Best Offsite Meeting

Employee offsite meetings are one of the best chances to let employees interact with the leadership level of the organization. When the culture message leadership sends out aligns with their regular efforts to improve company culture, it shows that leadership is in touch with the realities of working life. This alignment is the first step toward giving employees authentic recognition from leadership—even when your organization grows past the point where everyone works on the same floor or in the same building.

Developing your employee offsite strategy

Before you pick a caterer or search for relay races, take stock of your current culture. It helps to start with the most important question:

What are our mission, vision, and values?

These three facets of your organization should play a part in every decision your organization makes, and that includes the scope and content of an employee offsite meetings. Like culture, these three abstract terms need a solid definition.

Mission: What is your organization’s main reason for existing? Is it to produce a product? To serve a community? To take investment money and provide a return for investors? Defining and communicating your mission is the first step to moving beyond operational concerns.

Vision: What is your primary goal for your organization? A specific goal provides a checkpoint to measure your progress. Are you looking to be the number one software in your field? Are you expanding your outreach to serve 20,000 people in need?

Values: If the mission is the engine and the vision the destination, then your values are your fuel. How are you going to get from here to there? Are you going to build a high-octane sales team that takes no prisoners? Are you encouraging people to be friendly at work, or are they polite rivals who fight each other to climb the ladder?

Aligning employee offsite meetings with employee recognition

Again, your company offsite should prove that the leadership of your organization is in touch with your employees. What do your employees care about at work? At home?

My most memorable company offsite was a holiday party in my first real job after college. My wife and I drove downtown only to find that the validated parking in the hotel was already filled to capacity because of a Neil Diamond concert.

We ended up paying for parking so we could eat some decent food and listen to the CEO talk before presenting the big gift: a free subscription to the software the company sold. “We’re creating moments in time,” he said, “for the time of your life.” He then cued the 80’s pop hit, The Time of My Life.

The strongest takeaway from that experience: Neil Diamond still owes me $10. $10 was a lot back then, especially when (a few weeks later) the CEO and the other co-founders rented four luxury cars for a day and chatted excitedly about their afternoon as they walked past my small cubicle. Knowing the expense of their private offsite put our gift of free-to-provide-to-employees software in a less flattering perspective.

There is so much more to employee recognition than dollar amounts. An elaborate company meeting can strengthen your organization’s peer relationships, but it won’t replace them when it comes to keeping employees engaged. A generous giveaway can supplement an employee’s compensation, but it won’t provide security if their salary doesn’t.

Meaningful activities for company offsite meetings

As you plan out activities for your employee offsite meeting, keep your employees’ needs in mind. Here are some activity suggestions that can be meaningful for everyone attending:

Team building

Games: It’s not often you get all your employees in one spot, so pick activities that are both fun and meaningful! Selecting a more involved, collaborative game like any of these from the Survival Simulation Series raises the stakes and provides an opportunity for bonding and learning about each other outside of work. A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, either—a company talent show gives employees a peek into the extracurricular passions of other team members.

Service: There’s nothing to say the competition can’t be service-related. In previous company retreats, BambooHR participated with Rise Against Hunger to package meals to send to food-insecure locations worldwide. Many service organizations offer professional coordinators to help with setup, making it easier to mobilize your workforce for a good cause.

Roundtables: Among all the learning that goes on during company offsite meetings, some of the best insights can come through feedback from coworkers. Setting structured time aside for open discussions on communication, leadership, successes, and failures can lead to personal and career growth. Being open is also an important step in building unity in your organization.