How To Plan A Memorable Work Retreat For Your Employees

A work retreat is generally referred to as a company outing, bringing team members together in a unique way. In a company outing or team-building activity, the primary goal is to motivate employees to work together. It aims to develop the strengths of every member, and to address weaknesses or areas that need improvement. 

In this post, you’ll learn how to plan a memorable work retreat for your employees to create an extraordinary and worthwhile experience.

Set A Clear Goal

It’s important to have a well-defined and clear goal. It could be resolving a specific problem, fostering professional relationships with one another, or advancing an issue. Before planning, setting clear objectives is crucial to achieving successful outcomes. 

Check out these tips when setting a clear goal for a work retreat:

• Get The Pulse Of Your Employees: Conduct a survey and ask each employee what they want to accomplish from the work retreat. This way, you can create more impactful objectives. 

• Set Measurable And Attainable Goals: You probably want to maximize your employees’ knowledge and skills or bring out the best in them through a work retreat. You can do this by ensuring that your actionable steps, like providing corporate incentive cruises, would be compatible with the results you’re aiming for. Set goals that are still measurable and attainable to motivate and inspire your employees.

Choose The Right Place

The main goal of a work retreat is to enable your team members to focus their minds on an issue or to attain a company objective with greater purpose by eliminating the office environment and usual day-to-day business routines and operations.

It can be a work-related gathering or an offsite meeting that can help in creating a better work culture. All of these can influence your employees’ decision-making skills and productivity levels.

Be Prepared

It’s important to finish all pending workloads and projects before the work retreat. If it is close to impossible, all alert or notification responders should be activated on your employees’ emails and phones to let your clients know and keep your team from being preoccupied with unanswered calls and emails.

Plan The Activities 

Initiating a work retreat and other extracurricular activities in the company promotes teamwork. Many people relocate because of new job opportunities and a better work environment or benefits. The last thing you’d want to happen is to lose employees, especially the top ones, due to poor work culture. 

Planning the activities you’ll have in a work retreat is vital to its success. As much as possible, you want it to bring lots of fun and unforgettable memories. Also, you want it to be meaningful and productive.

Take a look at these company retreat ideas:

• Water Activities: When traveling, you’ll encounter a lot of bodies of water. Water activities, such as surfboarding, kayaking, and boating, are not only fun, but also unforgettable.

• Brewery Tours: It’s a unique activity that involves wine or whiskey tasting, giving a luxurious feel, as well as lots of fun even for non-drinkers.

• Cooking Class: A cooking class with your employees is a delicious and exciting way to create something together. It builds your camaraderie as a team.

• Fine Dining: While you probably have lots of casual outings together, expensive and fine dining in one of the best hotels in the country makes employees feel that they are highly valued in the company. 

• Karaoke: A singing team is a united team, so if most of your employees love singing and dancing, a karaoke activity must be included in your work retreat. You can rent a dedicated karaoke station or a private room to accommodate all members.

Remote Work Retreat At Home

Because of the current health crisis the world is facing today, remote working or at-home work conditions are very popular. One way to also embrace the new normal while the coronavirus vaccine has not been discovered yet is to initiate a remote work retreat at home.

Take a look at these recommended remote work retreat activities you can do at home:

• Online workout classes via Zoom
• Creating a song cover as a team and uploading it on YouTube
• Sharing literary pieces, like poems and quotes, together via Skype or whatever means of  communication

Conclusion

Planning a memorable retreat is not an easy task. It should start with a clear goal set in place.  Choosing the right venue and activities is also of the essence. Furthermore, you have to know the individual and common interests of your employees by conducting a survey. If there are travel restrictions, you can remotely conduct retreat from home through the online platforms.

 

Feature image courtesy of Pixabay