How Remo Created Our 2021 Virtual Annual Retreat—with 92% Positive Feedback

How did you celebrate 2021 with your team?

This is a series of four articles where I share our story about our annual retreat this year. In this first article, I'll talk about logistics, attendance, and most importantly—how I celebrated with our wonderful team in 2021.

This is part 1 of a 4 article series. If you're looking for ways to celebrate your team, I hope you find this series useful.

Last year, we hosted our largest annual virtual retreat yet, highlighting how technology works best when it brings people together. With over 100 employees in more than 25 countries cultivated online and proved that virtual relationships are equally as meaningful and enriching as those that we develop in person.

Why an Annual Company Retreat? What was our Goal?

We’ve all attended enough virtual events to know they aren’t always the most exciting. However, these experiences empowered us to build something different to capture the same feeling of togetherness and engagement amongst our team in the same way that you get at a physical retreat.

The main objective was to facilitate meeting new people and experiencing the event together in a fun and unique way. I wanted to create meaningful relationships and have more emotional connections between people. One goal that I had was the number of new people each person met, and if they would Slack message that person individually after the retreat to talk about non-work topics.?

As it was an annual event, we committed to creating 3-hour sessions per day for 5 days. Our challenge began by doubling down on designing each activity, session, and day in a way that would ensure that every attendee left the event feeling a certain way about their own unique experience.

Planning Challenges

Having people spread across 25 countries meant our biggest challenge was navigating through multiple time zones. I overcame this obstacle by choosing a 3-hour time slot when 90% of our team would be awake. But some attendees didn't find it so easy when faced with waking up at 5 am or staying up until 1 am for several days in a row.

Another primary consideration was centered around the luxury of having a wonderfully diverse team. I wanted to be mindful to celebrate all of our cultural differences and be respectful of each other's boundaries. It was also paramount for us to create a safe and supportive environment where everyone felt like they could be 100% themselves.?

I realized early in our journey that the feeling of togetherness only happens in an open and inclusive environment. But this can be a little challenging in a virtual environment as you don't have as many physical activities to help everyone relax and loosen people up.

Our third challenge was the planning of activities that were accessible to all. For example, I initially wanted to do a gingerbread house activity or a DIY cocktail/mocktail-making class. But it was near impossible to find vendors who could deliver materials and physical items to all of our team members.?

I was forced to admit defeat and scrap these ideas because the most important thing about coming together as a team/group is that no one feels left out. So our rule was, if even one person couldn't do it or get access to the items needed for the activity, we wouldn't do it.

Finally, the team was hit with another unexpected challenge when attempting the distribution of swag kits to our team across the globe. While in many cases, the kits were delivered seamlessly in less than a week, for many of the countries, I had to navigate complicated custom requirements that we could not have anticipated until they occurred. Luckily Stylegifts Ltd came to our rescue and handled our Swag Kit supply and distribution. In addition, Stylegifts were an invaluable support partner who were by our side every step of the way to assist with any hiccups – logistical or otherwise.

Building Hype! How We Got the Team Excited!

Unlike in-person retreats, virtual meetings can leave attendees surrounded by distractions that are just a click away, and there are many opportunities to zone out. I knew we would have to ensure our content was highly engaging and was delivered to people when they were not under pressure with work commitments.

I initially picked early December for our retreat week and asked our team to take time off before year-end to recharge and use up some of their annual leave. However, I quickly had to backtrack and ask our team not to book holidays during the retreat week. In hindsight, I had unwittingly caused a little confusion. But once I learned mt lesson, we had a lot of pre-retreat preparation that enabled us to get as many people involved as possible.?

Slack announcements proved to be a great way of exciting people about various parts of our events program, including salsa dancing, drag performances, and rap battles to prizes and raffles. I posted around three announcements a week with GIFs and used our email list to send countdown emails to our entire team. I also hired a video editor to create hype videos to tease our planned activities–creating mystery and excitement. I found someone on Fiverr to help us with that, and it turned out to be very effective in getting people excited.

I also asked volunteers to put their names forward to join in a few parts of the program as hosts/announcers for the awards and talent show. Many actively engaged with us during the planning stages and participated by owning their own part of the schedule.?

I knew that everyone wanted it to be lighthearted and fun from our first committee meeting. Barry encapsulated that in the GIFS he created of our leadership team to get people laughing ahead of time.

Logistical Preparation

To ensure, I captured every employee's voice, we started with a ten-person committee. But as time progressed, I learned that this was too big of a team to execute at a fast pace when everyone wanted to have their say, but only a few were willing to commit and call decisions. In addition, some people were juggling other commitments and distractions, so a core team of 5 was left to plan about T-6 weeks from the event.

Preparing for the global distribution of swag kits began by deciding the number of items to give away, what prizes to give, the total budget per person, and finally, finding the best supplier for the location. I also had to ensure that the supplier could ship the items individually across different countries.??

Logistically, this involved weekly meetings to work on one spreadsheet with all the details such as budget, prizes, attendance, run of the show, etc. The nearer the event, the more often I had meetings as floor plans changed and coordinated with the day's theme. The best one I would say was the Oscar's-like red carpet event!?

For the physical plaques won by our Annual Awardees, I sent the winners a physical glass plaque that I sourced from each country's local suppliers. The biggest lesson I learned was that we should have confirmed logistics a minimum of two months before the retreat week. Although everything went to plan, I felt we were cutting it fine with deadlines and would give ourselves a little longer to prepare next time.

Financial Considerations

When planning the event, we were given a budget of $50,000 USD to work with. Considering how much a physical face-to-face retreat with flights, accommodation, and a venue large enough to fit 100 employees would cost, $50,000 USD for a virtual retreat is a reasonably efficient and cost-saving number. On the other hand, I had the lovely problem of having $500 USD per head to spend, which would not have been possible at an in-person event.

Predictably, the most significant part of our budget was allocated to our company swag and global shipping ($25,000 USD). The second largest part of our budget was distributed to vendors and facilitators.?

Finally, I also had several team building entertainment line items ($15,000 USD). Although this may sound like a lot, the activities helped bring the retreat to life in the lighthearted and fun way our employees asked for.

Here are some of the fun events I offered, and we had a blast.

Stay tuned next week as we dive more into these activities!

• Secret Library Team Building Game
• DJ + Salsa Teacher
• Freestyle Rap Artist
• Drag Performers
• Mental Health Facilitator
• Mentalist

The remainder of our budget was spent on prizes, incentives, raffles ($6,000 USD), sponsoring food and drink ($2,000 USD), and video production, along with a few other misc items ($2,000 USD). All of which meant everything came in at our budget of $50,000.?

Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks as I will go over everything we did for each day/activity. Shout out to the great team at Remo.

#BigIdeas2022, #Innovation, #Virtualevents