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A business goes on a corporate retreat when they decide to take their team out of their usual setup (office or WFH) to “withdraw” from the distractions of the daily routines to work on other aspects of the business, such as enhancing cohesion communication, collaboration, brainstorming new ideas, creating camaraderie …
It occurs in the city or nature in a neutral, comfortable, and inspiring environment. It is an opportunity to take a step away from the frantic pace of life and business as usual to return to work better equipped as a team.
While this is not your purpose, understanding what type of retreat you need will help tremendously in figuring out your purpose. Let’s go over the main ones:
Now that you know what type of retreat you are hosting, let’s narrow down your purpose. We find that it always helps to answer the following questions:
These are some thoughts to get you started in the right direction. We recommend bouncing ideas with colleagues and developing a concise shared purpose that can easily be explained in a sentence.
Figuring out the purpose of your retreat, the “WHY”, should be your primary goal. Author and Gathering Guru Priya Parker puts it well:
“The purpose of your gathering is more than an inspiring concept. It is a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial.”
Don’t mistake a type of event for your “why”. Like most goals, it should be specific, measurable, and actionable. And once you have it, share it!
Tell your team, "We are going away for THIS reason, and we will achieve THIS," so it becomes a shared purpose that will help tremendously when creating the agenda, planning activities, and throughout the whole event.
This will be your key to understanding if your retreat was successful.
Like any other KPIs and OKRs, you simply check that your goals have been met. That is why defining them beforehand is essential. Since your goals are your own, there is no “one size fits all” success checklist.
Pro tip: at Campfire Company, we always look at success through three lenses:
The best way to figure out if you have a good ROI on your team retreat is to make use of surveys and feedback forms (make it fun; no one waits to answer forms), through observing your team’s behavior post retreat as well as the level of productivity and creativity in the short and long term. That is when you can determine if the investment paid off.
Because retreats are often associated with “yoga, relaxation, and other meditative practices,” some still believe corporate retreats are just an ingenious way of taking days off while being paid.
It has been proven repeatedly that corporate retreats have powerful positive effects on teams, individuals, and the company's overall business.
In a piece from 2023, FORBES lists upgrading your workforce, leveraging impact, and punctuating purpose as three reasons to prioritize a company retreat.
But getting to know your teammates better in a way that allows you to see their hidden talents, consolidating a shared purpose, and ensuring the whole team is aligned with a vision are not the only benefits of taking your team away from the [home] office for a few days.
Some of our favorite benefits from Team retreats, and nature team retreats in particular, include:
That will depend on your budget, setup (are you all remote, hybrid, or all at the office every day?), and team size.
The smaller the team, the more often you should retreat. As your team grows, the logistics of it all become a bit trickier, but we still recommend that large teams meet at least twice a year.
It is an idea for very large corporate groups to meet by the department and do a company retreat once every two years.
Annually, quarterly, and every month, you choose what works best for you and your team, but one thing for sure is that it should be something other than a one-off occurrence.
Once again this will depend on the goal of your retreat. The more you expect from it the more time you will need. Obviously, your budget also comes into play.
Keeping in mind you mostly lose a day for arrival/check-in and departure / check-out, you will then need half a day for opening remarques, addressing goals and “housekeeping”, and a few hours to close and celebrate… in the end, there is not that much time left for deep work, outdoor fun & bonding, and of course the cringy corporate icebreaker games. And that is without counting the necessary downtime for social batteries to recharge for individuals to rest and integrate.
Our team of experts likes to encourage 4 -5 days for the ultimate experience.
Indeed, around that 4th day, people are finally truly relaxed and comfortable in their new environment and with each other. Mini routines have been established, and that is when the “magic” tends to happen.
We’ve asked our location specialists for their top five things they look at when scouting for a new location; here are their answers:
Nothing starts without asking the right questions.
These are some of our favorites that will help you design your agenda much faster and better:
Beforehand:
During:
Afterward:
Once you have these answers, you are ready to schedule!
This one goes out to the checklist enthusiasts!
The checklist structure is reassuring, helps to delegate and measure progress, and will allow everything to run smoothly.
Before you start working on your agenda, you will need to know a few things:
Getting these things right is essential to the success of your gathering. That is where structure is key. However, it is also essential to make sure logistics do not make you forget why you are doing this. A well-planned event will have space to allow for "flow", which is usually where the magic happens. But flow without structure quickly turns into chaos.
The plan is absolutely essential, especially because not everything will always go according to it and that is ok. If we have learnt anything from the past few years of hosting hundreds of events is that you should leave space for unplanned and serendipity encounters.
If you all want to relax, we recommend delegating that essential role to professionals.
Taking on that role is a huge responsibility that can create a distance between you and the rest of the team, not to mention the mental and physical exhaustion that will ultimately come from running around trying to answer every question and putting down small fires all day.
Another point worth addressing is the struggle to stay objective when the facilitator is a colleague. How to treat everyone the same way when we already know so much about them, how they work, what they like, and what they usually complain about? Staying objective can be a real challenge but is an essential piece of the successful retreat puzzle. Finally, the event might be a success, but will you feel the same inspiration and connection with your team?
Assessing the opportunity cost of facilitating your own retreat or asking professionals to take on the task is a great leadership skill that can truly impact the success of your event.
Choosing to delegate this role means taking part as any other team member. This can be a very strategic move for you and your coworkers. It is also allowing for a new energy and perspective to come into the dynamic.
At the end of the day, it is your event and your decision. It will also impact the budget and it can also go very well with some proper preparation and guidance. No matter what you decide to do, resources are always available online and offline to support you and your team during your retreat or workation.
Everyone who has ever participated in a retreat or a team event knows about the dreaded icebreakers. Taking your team on a proper retreat is an opportunity to offer activities that are actually fun.
A rule of thumb is to ask your retreat experts or the venue what activities they can offer or suggest in the area and then discuss it with your team to see what would be the most enjoyable for everyone.
One feels like they belong when they experiences being accepted and valued by the group. One feels safe and seen. It is an essential human need (Maslow), and while it is primarily seen as affecting us on a personal level, it impacts everything around us, including business.
In a piece from February 2024 titled “Maximizing Employee Potential: The Business Case for Workplace Belonging” by The Diversity Movement, they go into great detail to explain how much belonging can impact productivity, communication, and innovation.
When feeling a sense of belonging, employees are more likely to feel secure, valued, and consequently motivated to engage with others and the organization's goal.
The sense of belonging you will feel with your family and friends will not necessarily be the same as the one you will feel in your team, but it still plays an important role.
Acknowledging your team and individual achievement, being celebrated, being heard and listened to, and having your ideas respected…creates what we would call the basics of a healthy company culture that should help nurture a sense of belonging. But that is not enough.
People feel like they belong when they have a shared story to tell, a shared challenge or vision to fix or work towards, when they can recognize one another through symbols (words, jargon, swag…) and share moments that transcend the task at hand.
And while these can happen any time, corporate retreats are the perfect place to exponentially grow a sense of belonging within your team members.
Through play, nature activities, downtime for unplanned encounters and conversations, and a lot of shared meals around good food in beautiful sceneries, creating unexpected synergies, shared memories, and stories to share for years to come.
We wanted to give food its own section here because its power is underrated.
Canadian architect and Cohousing expert Grace Kim says it all:
"The easiest way to start building a community is simply to eat together. Breaking bread is a human action. " [...] "those that eat together more frequently exhibit higher levels of communitas. It turns out that when you eat together, you start planning more activities together. When you eat together, you share more things".
So before we go off and plan intricate team bonding activities and games (which can be a lot of fun, too), we always advise to really think through those meals:
Last but not least, good company is not just good for the company (see what we did here?) but for your team members' health as well. It has been scientifically proven that eating with others is better not just for your well-being but for your guts! People eat more greens and less unhealthy snacks throughout the day when they eat with others. As we share stories and enjoy each other's company, we allow for more time for digestion and are often more mindful of what is being served, even more so when we have cooked together beforehand.
Corporate Social Responsibility and inclusivity are often important considerations when planning a team retreat.
These usually start when looking at the venue. Are they “eco-friendly”and respectful of the environment they are in, have a look at their website and social platforms. How accessible they are is also an important question as well as the providers they work with (are they locals?).
When it comes to activities, rather than making big intricate and expensive plans we also encourage organizations to look at hands-on CSR activities such as beach cleanup, volunteering, charity projects, tree planting… that will feel rewarding and have a clear and immediate positive impact.
Regarding diversity and inclusion, actively involve your employees with different backgrounds or disabilities in the planning process of your retreat to ensure every voice is heard.
If there is one thing your marketing team most probably always demands from you, it is good-quality pictures and videos of the team at work (or play). The truth is, and we have all been there, this is difficult to deliver for many reasons: no one has time, no one wants to be in pictures at the office, no one has a professional camera, no one is doing anything exciting enough to be photographed or filmed… and so we reuse the same old company shots and god forbid, stock pictures on the website and social platforms.
However, a retreat is the perfect opportunity to feed two birds (many more, really) with one scone as you and your team will be in beautiful surroundings doing a lot of exciting activities and workshops.
It is the perfect time to plan for some content to be created, liaise with your marketing person/team, and even invest in professional video makers and photographers to snap quality content that can be used on all your platforms for a month.
Here again, it depends on the size of your team, the length of your stay, and how far you are going.
Look at past and similar events if you haven't been given a budget. If you have, an easy way to look at it is to split it in four between your main expenses:
Then, identify a few places and ask for quotes to run up different options. If you have to re-adjust, make sure to keep your goal and purpose in mind to avoid cutting on something important, whether in terms of activities or even length of stay.
Explore ways to save:
The end should be part of your plan, just as much as the start.
Don't let the energy of the last day of the retreat die, overdosing on logistics. Only rooms should be checked out; people should still be fully present. As you start with intention, consider how you plan to end this experience.
We should never underestimate how biased our human brains are. As Lexie Kane, User Experience Specialist, puts it, 'Impressions Become Memories'.
The peak-end rule explains that what you will have experienced the most intensely, whether it is positive or negative, as well as what you'll have experienced last, will be what will stay with you. That is why you want to make the end of your event emotionally memorable in the most positive way possible. Something as simple as closing with a round of compliments and appreciation for one another can go a very long way.
In The Art Of Gathering, Priya Parker teaches us about the Last Call. That is, acknowledge that the end is coming before it happens. Bars have the tradition of the last call, a last chance to order before the place closes. It is all about managing expectations and mentally preparing your team for what is to come. As people realize that the end of the event approaches, they might be inspired to take a chance to connect with someone, speak up about an idea they just had, or simply take one last dip in the pool. Whatever it is, they are preparing to close this journey.
Any successful gathering will bring new ideas and reflections for the group and the individual. Give both an opportunity to reflect to increase the chances that those new seeds will sprout.
Invite the people to look inward, sharing or not, with the rest of the group about their reflections and learnings.
Then, look outward: encourage the group to gather as one and celebrate the bonds that were strengthened or created here.
Finally, bring them to look forward: what are we excited about next?
Make the end as memorable as the rest of the stay, close with intention and you will not lose the momentum your retreat created.
With these in mind consider these questions when planning the closing of your retreat:
Make the closing session of your team retreat memorable not only to reinforce learning but also to foster connection and enthusiasm among team members.
This concludes our piece on corporate retreat. We understand it might be a lot to take in.
Indeed, taking your team on a retreat is a proper investment that demands careful research and planning to reap the benefits. , which can be bountiful.
Organizing a successful corporate retreat can be a few months full-time job for the HR or Head of People representative and sometimes feel overwhelming. Do not forget to check in with them regularly, and in doubt, to hire experts so you can enjoy the retreat fully as a participant.
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