Organizing a company retreat for your team is your chance to thank them for all the hard work they’ve put in, so here’s everything you need to run a company retreat right and provide them the opportunity to form better personal and work relationships and to get aligned with the direction your business takes next year. However, it’s often underestimated how much it takes to plan for the retreat to go smoothly. Here, we will need what elements you need to fix firmly ahead of the big trip.
Accommodation
The very first thing you need to do is decide where you’re going and ensure there’s room for you there. What type of accommodation do you choose, is it a hotel, cabins, a series of B&Bs or any other, it is up to you. You’ll need to ensure you have space for all participants, with separate rooms being a necessity for most people. Take the time to find out about the amenities your accommodation has, whether or not they have space for your retreat or if you must rent beyond what they offer, and how much of your budget will be available.
traveling
Some companies decide to leave the ride completely up to the participants but, if you do, you should expect that more people will not be capable to do it as a result. On the contrary, it’s a good idea to hire a coach (and a driver, if needed) to pick you up and your team and take you all on one trip to your location, in addition to book your return trip. Think about the most convenient meeting place, and ensure you allow enough time for people to meet and organize themselves before the coach really leaves. If there are multiple people who need to be picked up at different locations as a result of vehicle accessibility or disabilities, you may want to discuss this with them first.
Food
If the venue does not provide catering yet otherwise you just want to ensure you cater to all your group’s dietary requirements, then you should hire a caterer. With services like https://www.saintgermaincatering.com/catering/catering-in-virginia, you should check to ensure they can meet all your criteria, can feed the number of individuals you have, and that you’re well aware of any dietary restrictions that may affect your team ahead of time so you can ensure that everybody has something to eat. Catering is generally the second largest part of a company retreat budget so you want to ensure you leave plenty of room for it and arrange for it as soon as you have a place and a way to get there.
Everything You Need To Run A Company Retreat Properly
Activity
There are two types of activities you will want to do at your company retreat. You want to have team building activities that can help increase your group’s cohesion, but you also want to leave room for good old-fashioned recreation. For the previous, you may want to rent some team building exercise leader, or at least find an activity that works for him first. It can even include things like motivational or industry speakers, hackathons to generate new business ideas, in addition to more traditional activities like paintball, escape rooms, cooking classes, and the like.
Information
You would not be leading your employees around the clock when you are out on a retreat. Both you and they’ll want lots of free time to enjoy the destination you’re going to. The sooner you tell your team about the trip, the better, and you should start providing them with information about restaurant recommendations, attractions, and activities in areas they can go and see as well. If you run daily with a scheduled itinerary, you can even give them an idea of the to-and-flight travel times of your location and recommended activities. This is pretty easy to do once you know the location, you just need to find the distance between them on Google Maps. You can even prepare flyers for participants to take as they please.
You want your company retreat to be successful, so start planning for the above inclusions as soon as possible. The quicker you get things done in concrete terms, the easier it is going to be for you to adapt your plan to any changes that may occur
