Offsites are the New Offices - How to Optimize Them

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This week’s Gianna’s Gem is on Optimizing your Offsites.

But First…Why they Matter:

  • Forbes recently published a study that 81% of corporate millennials consider in-person communication to be vital to their success. With the new reality of remote-first workplaces, offsites become a critical bridge to drive collaboration and business success.

  • Offsites are beneficial for creating new relationships or creating cross-functional alignment, and also strengthening current relationships within one’s own team/org.

  • Offsitesinspire new ways of thinking and ideas that will help a company succeed. Remember my post about Steve Jobs getting his best ideas while on vacation? There’s something about stepping out of our regular environment and away from our computers that enables our minds to find the space to think bigger and more boldly, especially when we can brainstorm and feed off other colleague’s ideas. In fact, ~34% of workers have claimed getting their most creative ideas while on a company retreat. 

  • Fun Fact: Company retreats have been so successful in forming bonds and promoting innovation, that some companies are considering purchasing destinations to provide offsites throughout the year.

If I’ve convinced you that offsites are important for your company’s growth and employee productivity and retention, read on for how to optimize them:

Offsite Optimization Step 1: Establish a Theme to Focus Agenda and Activities

Depending on the demographic, size of the group, location, budget,  etc, it’s helpful to establish a theme/purpose for each offsite to help tie the experience together. Here are some examples:

  • Adventure: Promotes team-building and bonding and also inspire problem-solving muscle-building. Great for extraverted and competitive teams like Sales, and also for teams from the same org. Activities could include:

    • Escape rooms, Ropes courses, Scavenger hunts, Kayaking, Hiking, bike touring, bob-sledding, dude-ranch activities 

    • Leverage speakers like Mount Everst climbers or other athletes who have blazed trails, or have former olympic or well-respected athletes lead an activity session for a special magical moment (I’ve had Olympic swimmers, bikers and runners lead Executives in group exercise in the am before and it was a peak experience for them)

    • Thematic enhancements: Make your own trail mix bar, personalized bandanas and/or cowboy hats, ice baths, branded canteen water-bottles

  • Creative: Excellent for creative, brand, comms, or experience teams (also engineers), teams with more introverts, or executives

    • Art classes (painting, pottery, etc.), Cooking, mixology or winemaking, Improv/comedy workshops, Music-making, weaving, writing class, etc.

    • Use an icebreaker on a related theme such as: Visit an art gallery and have everyone share which is their favorite painting and why.

    • Gifting - custom aprons, label/bottle wine produced by the team in a custom “blend”

  • Volunteering / Give-Back: Great for people/comms teams, holiday offsites and organizations who value giving back to community (also great for brand building)

    • Community service i.e. home-building, graffiti cleaning, mentoring local students, Environmental clean-up efforts, or team shopping competition for family’s wish-lists around the holidays

    • If you’re in a local community for the event that is not your own, welcome local vendors in for a “local gift bazarre” and allocate a certain amount of budgetfor purchasing a gift from local vendors. If the offsite is in your own community, donate any materials/food/swag from the event to local community afterwards. 

  • Wellness: Great for teams who have just completed a major project, event, initiative and need some R&R. Also great for teams who are burned-out or need to recharge.

    • Ideas include: Yoga or meditation retreats. Spa days, acupuncture (they even have mobile acupuncture now), sauna/ice bath, healthy foods and beverages: spa water, mock-tails, bone broth bar, make you brown tea sachets, or foraging in the forrest for adaptogenic herbs and flowers to add to food

    • Gifting may include: branded eye masks, heating pads, scented essential oils (or blend and take home from the event), and healthy snacks/treats.


Offsite Optimization Step 2: Establish Goals and Priorities:

Assigning a weight to each goal which will help advise how you structure the agenda:

  • What % of the offsite if dedicated to bonding/teambuilding? 

  • What % of the offsite if dedicated to business needs (strategy, education/training, creative ideation, etc)? 

  • What % should be focused on cross-fuctional networking?

Offsite Optimization Step 3: Establish Your Budget, Planning Timeline and Plan for Execution:

  • Determine your budget (per attendee) and then you can back-into which locations, dates, and activities are realistic for your team/company. This helps reduce the amount of options + constraint often leads to better focus and creativity.

  • Establish dates for the offsite, lock them in via contract/calendar holds and start planning communication and logistics backwards from there. Make sure you get a save the date and RSVP out ASAP to confirm attendance so you don’t pay an attrition penalty.

  • Determine whether to use an event pro (like me) to assist with strategy/planning, or leverage internal team, or an external offsite planning SAAS platform (see Gianna Recommends for vendor suggestions)

Offsite Optimization Step 4: Evaluate the Success of your Offsite, and establish a frequent cadence of offsites

  • The end of your offsite is only the beginning! Make sure you measure the success of the offsite (email me if you need help with how to do this), so you know what resonated most/least with attendees.

  • Establish an annual offsite calendar/cadence so you can get ahead of booking optimal dates/locations, maintain a drumbeat of social connection, innovation and company bonding, reduce budgeting (further out usually means better rates), and signal to attendees that this is a normal operating expectation.

In summary, when planning, consider: Team preferences and personalities, company culture and goals, budget constraints, balancing teambuilding with productive outcomes, and be careful that the offsite is inclusive to everyone attending. 

Happy summer campers!