How To Appreciate and Celebrate Your Employees!

Last month, I had the chance to share with you the first part of our Virtual Retreat I ran for our team at Remo! We had the best time, and I wanted to share some of the activities we did in this second article to give you some ideas regarding how you can celebrate you and your team too!

I hope you find these ideas useful, and please reach out with any questions!

Here is a breakdown of our agenda and what activities we did.

Day 1 - Retreat Kick off!

Dress-up theme: Crazy Shirt & Hat Day

Agenda

• 15 minutes Welcome Remarks by CEO Hoyin
• 10 minutes Culture Recap for the year by Sam K Chief of Staff
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 30 minutes Salsa Dancing with Charlene Rose
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 5 minutes Break
• 1.5 hours Secret Library Team Building Game
• 10 minutes Vote for Best Dressed

Salsa Dancing

We worked with the amazing agency GetSomeClass, run by Joseph Gerstel. He recommended a few excellent facilitators, performers, entertainers to spice up our retreat and ensure our team was wow-ed!?

We learned how to Salsa Dance from a world champion Latin Dancer Charlene Rose. We wanted it to be more interactive and participate as a group instead of just following Charlene along on the screen, so we planned a fun competition where groups of people would come up together to have a short "dance-off." The Remo Team are incredibly competitive people, so any challenge or competition with prizes typically ensures we have lots of participation.

The Secret Library

Curious to know what happens when you cross improv comedy, interactive theater, and a bookworm’s dream? We were too. That’s why we booked an hour-long interactive session with Secret Library’s Origins Puzzle Theatre. We got to jump between tables and work collaboratively to solve clues and find the missing pieces to unlock the final door (not to mention interrogate all 9 of their brilliant live actors, like a real game of Clue).

Day 2 - Department Presentations and Mentalist Performance!

Dress-up theme: Superheroes

Agenda

• 45 minutes Department Presentations
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 20 minute 2 Truths 1 Lie Trivia
• 45 minute Department Presentations
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 1 hour Mentalist - Larry Soffer
• 10 minutes Vote for Best Dressed

Department Presentations

It was crucial for everyone in the company to understand what each department did and to celebrate achievements from all company areas. We grew from an 8 person team to a 100+ person team in a very short period of time, so being able to shed some light on how all departments worked together would be an excellent way for people to understand how they could potentially collaborate on future initiatives.

Trivia

We had a few different sets of trivia games (run through AHA Slides) throughout the week-long retreat. We settled on two major themes: "Who's workstation is this?" which highlighted the different work environments and remote office setups that everyone had, and shared a little piece of people's lives that you don't usually get to see in asynchronous communication.

Another trivia theme was two truths and one lie, so we could test and see how well we knew each other! This game was also inspired by our regular new joiner announcements on Slack, where we write two truths and one lie about each person in the announcements, and the rest of the company has to guess which one is the lie.

Mentalist Show

We had the amazing mentalist, Larry Soffer, perform for us. We loved Larry's show because not only did he have amazing tricks and illusions, but his performance was also completely interactive as he brought people up on stage to do the set together. This delighted our audience, and they really enjoyed the pure hour of entertainment that Larry brought us.?

Day 3: Mental health

No dress-up theme - everyone takes a break!

Agenda

• 20 minutes Workstation Trivia
• 1 hour Mental Wellness Workshop
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 30 minutes Never Have I Ever Game
• 1 hour Drag Performance
• 5 minutes Raffle

Mental Health

Mental health and mindfulness are often discussed at Remo. We are acutely aware of the dangers of overworking and burnout associated with working remotely. Without being in a physical office, it's also challenging to understand how people are feeling on a day-to-day basis just through slack or email communication.? Olivia Bowser from Liberate was our facilitator, and she shared practical tips and small additions to our daily lives that would help with mindfulness and self-awareness. The main goal was to reflect for an hour, train our mental fitness, and decrease our stress levels.

Stay tuned next week because I'm going to share the second article in this series. If you're interested in learning more, please follow me here, stop by Remo, and reach out because we are hiring!