Company Retreat Best Practices

After about two years of many employees working from home, companies are turning to an old reliable way of creating bonds between co workers. It's the retreat.

I love this. So joining us now with some best practices for hosting a company retreat, we've got leadership expert and workplace consultant, it's Beth Ridley. I love this topic.

Yes, the retreats.

I know. Good to have you here. Okay, so what's the deal? I mean this is so. It's like movies are made about retreats, company retreats. Because I feel like it was like a forever thing and now they're kind of coming back.

They're coming back. You know, we've sort of turned the corner on Covid. People are trying to figure out how to make reconnections again, give a boost to the workplace culture. And retreat is a great way to do that. To celebrate all the hard work that employees have been doing over the past couple of years.

Yeah. The mental taxation we've had.

Yeah. And I love how there's always someone in the office you might not know that well, but this is a chance to get to know. What are some of the benefits though of getting together and doing a company or team retreat.

Just like you said, connection is a big one. Right. So connecting with each other, building those bonds that make a successful, cohesive team. Also I think just getting out of your day to day execution work mode and sort of looking up, being reminded of the bigger picture. We all want to feel like we're connected to something more meaningful. So connecting to meaning and purpose. There's also growth and development. Right. So investing in skill, building on the personal and professional side. And then also I think it's just celebrating. We don't do enough of that at work. Right. It's go, go, go, work, work, work. But we got to pause and celebrate the small and the big wins.

It's interesting because I feel like it's always a bummer when stuff is done on site. Like to me, when you get away or you go out and even like when we do our holiday parties, like I prefer when we do it off site because there's something about getting out of the building. How do you feel about getting out of your particular location to achieve the certain goals?

It's great. I mean, you know, just a change of scenery. And even if you can't go to someplace fabulous, I mean, just go to a coffee shop. Just a change in building, change in scenery gets people outside of their normal routine. Helps to, you know, people think a little bit differently, more creatively and it.

Just, you seem freer Outside of your workhouse.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, it is sort of like your workhouse. Occasionally you want to get out of your house. No matter how great your home is, it's good to just get out and, like, have a date night or whatever.

Agreed.

Kind of like a date night at work.

Okay, I like that.

I remember one retreat I went on wasn't for work, but it was at school. I was in choir. I went to Homestead High School. Were you there?

Yeah. Well, I went to Homestead.

Oh, there we go.

Were you in my retreat?

Did you do choir?

I did not. I was a band girl.

All right.

There you go.

So very good. We have the music in common. But Homestead was great. And we took a choral retreat. They would do them, and that was so much fun. I think I went on a couple of them where you'd go and, you know, you'd have your roommates, or sometimes you'd be all the guys in one room and all the girls, that kind of thing. And it was just such a fun time. Bonding, because all the downtime where, you know, you get to know each other. What are some of the activities or things that really make a retreat great?

So you really hit on something. I think a lot of times people over or underestimate just the downtime, just the time to do organic bonding. And they want to fill the street with, like, speakers and workshops and da, da, da, da, da. Those are good. But you also want to make sure that people have the chance for those, you know, interactions that they wouldn't normally have. And that bonding, that personal level bonding is really important. So actually having enough downtime where people are just connecting naturally is really important.

Do you recommend people put on a show together?

A talent show?

No.

We did come for our holiday party, and that was a blast. It's actually two years, I think talent shows.

A movie version.

Yeah. I will say you have to know your audience. So a big piece of a successful retreat is you ask your employees what's going to be meaningful on what the goal is or what you want to accomplish, and then ask.

Trust exercises.

Well, because it could be a myth, right? Exactly. You could say, well, this is wonderful. I'm going to do a talent show. And then there are some people who, like, don't want to do it. It's horrifying. And you have the opposite impact of causing a lot of stress and anxiety. So I just say, ask, ask, ask. Be clear on the outcome and then ask the people what would be meaningful to them to achieve that.

That sounds key.

It Is. And so on that note, because that's kind of an interesting point is what are things that would make it maybe not go as well as planned or you don't hit the goals that you intended.

Yeah, there are a couple things. One is, a lot of times people put too much emphasis on an outside speaker. They put all their money in this, like, big time outside speaker, a lot of money. And it can sometimes be a swing and a miss. Right. The outside speaker, they don't really know the culture that well or the people. So I like to say maybe think about saving money and tapping into your own internal talent. You have some employees who really do want to share who they're trusted and respected by their peers, and your peers want to hear from them. And so that's a really great way to tap into and also honor the talent that you already have.

I like that. And I feel like that, you know, there's often a go to towards management, but it sounds to me like you're talking about your everyday employee.

Yeah, very much so. It's a great way to celebrate the talent that you have. I like that.

And then everybody enjoys it. What are some ways to keep that spirit alive from the treat when you return to the office?

So that's the key, right? So the treat is great, but then you go back and it's like Tuesday, back and forth. Right.

So true.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, today is my day right now. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow anymore.

So here's a couple of ideas that some clients have used. So one, always take a team picture and then sort of mail that out afterwards so people can at least sort of like channel the spirit of the retreat. This is a really nice one. So at the end of the retreat, have everyone write something that they really enjoyed. A takeaway, a positive comment, and then mail them randomly to colleagues and peers at work. So you get it on that random Tuesday and you're like, oh, yeah, I remember why I love working with my. My peers and this company. And then the other one is a lot of times good ideas come out of the retreat and you're kind of wondering, are these going to go anywhere? Weave those ideas into your ongoing team meetings and discussions to make sure that you really start to think about how do we implement some of these things that came out of the retreat that.

Follow through, I think is key to making employees feel heard after that. So I love this, Beth. It was so great.

Really terrific. Makes you want to work at an office just to hopefully go on a retreat.

I know field trips bring them back. All right, you can rewatch this segment or you can send it to one of your co workers. Just go to our website. It's the morningblend. Com.