Plan Your Perfect Offsite with Swift Group!

Planning a team offsite soon??Here are a few tips to ensure that you make the most of your dedicated time together.

1.?Establish your desired outcomes at the beginning of your planning phase.

What do you ultimately want to get out of the experience? What do you hope to achieve??Identify a few grounding goals for the offsite and design your experience around working toward those.?Share those goals with the group at the beginning of the offsite.?This will appeal to your teammates who prioritize time management and often ask the question “is this a necessary meeting?”

2.?Collect input from the team.

Don’t plan the offsite in a silo.?Incorporate feedback from the team to ensure that you’re not missing critical content that would be valuable.?This can be done in a few different ways – creating an offsite committee or simply sharing the draft agenda with a few key team members for feedback.

3.?Don’t plan every minute – leave room for flexibility.

While it can be tempting to maximize your time together and fill every minute with content, be sure to leave time for casual conversations and build in buffer time for Q&A and collaboration.?A great way to do this is to include a 30-to-45-minute unstructured meal/snack at the beginning of day 1.?This gives folks an opportunity to catch up and doesn’t delay the agenda.

4. Create a “parking lot”.

Undoubtedly new ideas or topics will arise out of the offsite discussions.?Allow team members to add topics to a whiteboard “parking lot” to be discussed at a later date.?This will help keep the conversations at hand on track and allow for other potentially important items to be addressed at an appropriate time.

5. Incorporate fun into the experience.

Team building is generally a priority at offsites especially in a time where many, if not all, workers are remote.?Include this as a goal and it’ll ensure that you prioritize it in the design.

Fun can mean different things for different groups. Share a meal, schedule an optional happy hour, incorporate games/activities/prizes.?We recently helped organize an offsite for a client with an Olympics theme that had competitive games and activities sprinkled throughout.?This group valued connection and team building and the theme provided valuable bonding moments.

With these 5 tips in your back pocket, you have the building blocks to an amazing offsite. If you’re looking for more, reach out to [email protected] for a FREE 60-minute consultation with one of our seasoned Event Managers to learn more about how Swift Group can make your next offsite incredible.