How to organize a high-impact company retreat for your local, remote, & international teams

Planning a company-wide retreat can be challenging, especially if your team is regionally or globally distributed. Here’s how to make it a resounding success.

Sometime in 2018, I participated in planning an annual company-wide team retreat for the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, one of Kenya's leading Publishers. That year we took 150 people from across the country to Brackenhurst in Limuru for two days of team building. It was an incredible experience for all but also a huge undertaking.

From finding the perfect location to navigating the complexities of transport to ensuring everyone had a great time, it took us a month of research, planning, and dedication to pull off the ultimate team event. So I wanted to share my learnings with you so you, too, can plan and host a high-impact company retreat for your team.

Why Host a Company-wide?Retreat?

First things first, why even take your team to one location to meet up in person?

• Improve teamwork: A company-wide retreat provides an opportunity for colleagues to work together, share ideas, and build stronger relationships.
• Boost morale: Recognizing and rewarding employees' hard work through a fun retreat helps increase job satisfaction and motivation.
• Foster creativity: A change of scenery and new experiences can inspire creativity and innovative thinking.
• Increase productivity: Taking a break from the daily routine can recharge employees, leading to increased productivity when they return to work.
• Differentiate as an employer: Offering unique and memorable experiences can make a company stand out as an attractive place to work.

Getting?Started

So, you’ve decided - a retreat is just what your team needs. But there’s a lot to do, so where do you start? Let me break it down.

Objectives

Before you start planning the logistics of your company retreat, it’s important to understand what you want to get out of it. These objectives will help you determine all aspects of the trip. For example, is it primarily an offsite to discuss business goals and overcome blockers, or is it a retreat to help your colleagues connect and unwind? Often, a balance between the two is best. That’s what we did with JKF. The Retreat goals focused on celebration, connection, and looking ahead to the future. So while the majority of the time was spent celebrating achievements and building relationships, we did set aside some time for colleagues to hold work meetings and collaborate.

Internal & External Personnel

As we’ve said, planning and executing a successful company event or retreat is extremely complex and time-consuming, so it requires a lot of people power. While it can be tempting to use internal resources for all of the planning, I’d recommend against it if you don’t already have a dedicated events team with experience in organizing retreats. Partnering with an experienced corporate event agency frees up more of your colleagues to focus on their core roles in the lead-up to the event. If you do go down this route, be prepared to allocate around 20% of your event budget to this.

“One of my biggest takeaways from planning our 2018 team event was the importance of using an event agency. I highly recommend it for anyone else organizing an offsite without an experienced in-house team. For example, agencies have in-depth knowledge of destinations and hotels, which saves your team hours searching the internet trying to find the right one. It also means that everything will run much more smoothly once you're there because the agency can organize all the on-site logistics, and activities. Just be sure to pick one that can book hotel rooms, organise transport on behalf of employees in bulk, liaise with local events or tour operators, and handle all staff queries about logistics. That will save your internal teams so much time.” - HR Manager JKF

Timing

Speaking of time, how far ahead should you start planning? From my 10 years of experience, it’s best to start preparations at least two months prior to the team event, especially if you have a large team distributed across the region. Two months gives you ample time to secure rooms (or whole hotels!) and tours before they’re booked up, organize transport, purchase flight tickets at lower costs, and iron out any complex issues that might arise. As for the timing of your offsite, that will depend on where you go, which I’ll cover soon.

Budget

Next, work with stakeholders to define a budget for your team event. Ensure there’s enough to cover hotel rooms (ideally one per person, especially for the senior management), travel costs, food and drinks, activities, contingency, and any other extras you want (e.g., DJ and Game Drive). The reality is, company-wide offsites aren’t cheap - especially if your team is spread out across the region. So while there are many options starting from budget to luxury options, you should typically expect to pay around Ksh.12000 per person for two days over the weekend offsite.

Location

Once you’ve settled on an initial budget, you can start to look into the location of your retreat. This is a tough decision - but it’s one of the most important (and exciting!). So here are the main factors to consider:

• Where is your office based? Do you want to stay close to your office (or at least close to the majority of your employees) or explore an entirely new location? Factor in the total time it will take for your team to reach the destination.
• What type of atmosphere do you want to create where you’re there? Is it a beach holiday, a city break, an adventure trip, or something in between? Consider what aligns best with your values and goals.
• Which locations fit your budget? This will be determined by travel costs to the location and the cost of hotels and food while you’re there.
• Which hotels can facilitate your event needs? Consider the number of rooms needed, catering options, meeting room availability, team building grounds, proximity to excursion sites, and spaces for downtime, especially in the evening. Your event agency should be able to help you find and secure the right hotel.

For my client JKF, Brackenhurst Limuru was the ideal location because they wanted a budget-friendly location that was not out of Nairobi. Due to their budget and corporate culture, they wanted a location that was non-alcoholic and had big enough grounds for team-building activities. On top of that, one of our company values is “Curious,” so we wanted to reflect that in our location choice. Brackenhurst was an adventure for all.

Putting DEI at the Heart of Your?Retreat

Remote, regional teams are typically?diverse teams. Most corporates have employees who come from all walks of life, so diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are vital parts of our culture. That’s why DEI played such a huge role in my corporate retreat planning, too - from choosing the location to deciding on team activities.

So here are just some of the ways you can prioritize DEI during your offsite or retreat:

• Pick a location that enables a diverse group of people to join. Consider entry requirements, safety for marginalized groups, and accessibility.
• Host pre-trip training sessions on DEI and expected behaviors. Inform your team members of cultural differences - both at the destination and within the team.
• Ensure any dress codes are inclusive of all cultures and genders.
• Minimize the reliance on alcohol-centered activities so that everyone can participate whether they drink or not.
• Offer a wide variety of excursions to suit different people. For example, we have options including ziplining, Bike riding, water games, and a game drive!
• Schedule plenty of downtimes so that more introverted members of the team can recharge and unwind. Providing one room per person is important for this reason too.
• Inform your hotels and venues well in advance of specific dietary requirements and preferences so everyone is catered to throughout the trip.
• Organize a separate remote-friendly agenda for all those who can’t make it for whatever reason. Do virtual team-building activities, give them a budget to have their own celebrations, and send them a recording of key events and speeches from the retreat.

Maximizing Impact Through Employee?Communications

Nailing your communications before, during, and after the offsite is key to maximizing its impact and getting the most out of your investment.

Firstly, set expectations of what the retreat is and isn’t. Is it a holiday? A team-building trip? Are employees expected to carry out any work while there? Clearly outline what your expected behaviors are based on the objectives you set for the retreat as well as your company’s?code of conduct. This ensures everyone’s on the same page from day one, and it should help reduce issues later down the line.

In addition to setting expectations, it’s equally important to build excitement and keep the energy high in the lead-up to your retreat. If you need inspiration, here are some things you can do in the weeks leading up to the retreat:

• Tease the destination using hints before making a big reveal in a company-wide meeting.
• Release a teaser trailer showing all the incredible things to look forward to.
• Host quizzes to learn fun facts about the destination.
• Hold a photo challenge with the promise of prizes during the retreat.

Once your colleagues have arrived at the event, it’s important to keep up the excitement and create strong, motivating, and inspirational memories that will stick with them long after the trip is over. Speeches are a great way to do this. Get team members up on the stage to create more excitement, reinforce company values, celebrate achievements, and look ahead to the future. If they’re not used to public speaking or don’t feel comfortable in the limelight, it can be really helpful to provide training in advance.

After the event, keep the energy high by getting everyone to share their favorite photos and memories of the trip. You could even turn these into a video to share with the team and prospective candidates on your careers page.

And finally, send out a data-driven engagement survey to measure the impact of your offsite and gather learnings for next year.

We hope you’ve found these tips useful, and we wish you good luck with organizing your own high-impact company retreat!