Ahhh, Staff Retreats. Off-sites. Team Building Meetings. Remember what it was like to actually go “off site”—somewhere different—and “away” from the normal day-to-day grind of your workplace? Maybe you even had a budget for an experience that was designed to create team cohesion, excite your staff, or show appreciation for their hard work. But now, months into a global pandemic, with many worker bees “WFH,” can you really call these types of employee experiences “retreats” anymore?
My answer: no. They’re not retreats. There’s no “retreating” going on. In this environment, you can't promise or control for an experience where your team feels the benefits of an “in real-life” retreat.
So should you skip your all-staff gathering until this pandemic is over? Of course not! You can absolutely design a meaningful staff experience that meets your goals; just don’t call it a retreat. Instead, figure out the purpose of the gathering, use creativity to go beyond the virtual void your team might feel in a time of cognitive load, and give it a great name. More than a new name though—your all-staff or leadership team gatherings shouldn’t feel like any typical “meeting.”
Below is a list of what nine months of designing and facilitating virtual staff gatherings have taught me. I’ve provided my top learnings in a list format first for those who don’t have the time or headspace for details and examples. If you have more time or know you’ll be planning a staff gathering soon, keep reading the fine print because this post is for you!
How to plan a virtual company retreat or staff gathering:
Articulate the Gathering’s Purpose + Be Realistic: Have clear goals + Design for the virtual void.
Timing Matters: Break up your meeting times, Use existing blocked time in everyone’s calendar, Give staff time to process + Provide a pre-written OOO message for your team.
Gatherings Like This Need to Feel Different Than All Your Other Meetings: Put something in their hands + Thoughtful pre-work.
Session Design Should be Responsive: Ask for feedback early + often. Respond and design for what you hear.
A Small and Mighty Planning Team: Work with a team that can make quick decisions with full authority and autonomy.
Teams that Meet Should Eat: Spend money on food for your team during the gathering.
Content Matters: Read on for helpful themes and topics I’m seeing across different organizations for all staff + Leadership team gatherings.
Hire an Outside Retreat Facilitator to Do It All for You: You’ll be able to focus on your team and a skilled facilitator will do the rest.
That’s the short list! If you have time, keep reading for more details and examples.
1. Articulate the Staff Gathering’s Purpose + Be Realistic:
Have Clear Goals: What are your goals for the staff gathering? What does success look like at the end of the experience? What are your experiential goals—how do you want people feeling leading up to, during, and as a result of gathering together? Answer these questions clearly and you’ll be able to focus your planning time. These answers will also help you name or brand the entire experience better: It’s not a retreat, but rather a… (session, meeting, conversation, experience, gathering, convening).
Designing for the Virtual Void: Based on how you answer the above questions, make sure you acknowledge that some elements of your session won’t translate to the virtual void. For example, it can be difficult—no matter how good you are at facilitating—to design a “casual” experience on Zoom. Spontaneity has a different context. And, because things tend to take longer in the virtual realm, your office retreat agenda should be spacious. Cramming too much into your agenda means you’ll end up cutting people off or cutting sessions you promised. Instead, keep your retreat agenda tight on topics and generous on time.
Examples for designing for the virtual void (this is all about engaging for your participants):
The sessions themselves need to have at least a 5-10 minute break every 60 minutes or a 15 minutes break every 90 minutes. These are absolute minimum requirements on breaks. Every time we trim back or skip a break—I regret it.
You should add elements of movement into your session design—like a walk of some kind (and with some creativity you can connect a walking activity to content of your staff retreat like a guided mindfulness stroll or partner prompt walk and talk activities).
Make it “analog” in some way, so invite folks to engage with drawing/sketching or physical props that match the activities and conversations you’re planning to have.
You have to have to have “camera off” portions of your session. You need to prompt “you can go off camera for x amount of time” or invite folks to be on camera for only specific activities. No one is supposed to be “on” (tv!) for 8 hours a day. No one!
2. Timing Matters:
Okay—I hope it’s obvious to us all now, but just in case, I’m going to say it: No, your staff gathering should not run from 9am to 5pm with two 15-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch. These are not normal times—even “Work From Home” doesn’t mean the same thing as it did before the pandemic so know that your session design should look nothing like the typical corporate staff retreat or regular meeting. In my experience, staff gatherings should last no longer than four hours in one work day. Therefore, I recommend spreading your staff gathering over two or three days, creating both momentum and space. Articulate how the sessions thematically fit together, but design for space and generous timing in your agenda.
In those four hours, one hour should be dedicated to community/team-building activities that are both casual and intentional (check out skill 9 in this blog article on facilitation I wrote a few years ago for some specific company retreat ideas).
Two out of the remaining three hours should be designed for individual reflection, pair conversations, or small breakout group work to deepen personal learning + connect insights to team oriented action + future work. Virtual breakout groups for the win!
One hour maximum can be “talking at” staff in some way—but I recommend breaking that up into smaller chunks of time. If you do any version of “talking at” your staff, stick to “rule of 5”—find a way to create engagement every 5 minutes. Engagement in virtual session design can be things like virtual polling tools, word cloud feedback or prompt questions and wait for responses on a shared chat platform (like Slack, Teams or Zoom chat).
Examples of great session designs with thoughtful time considerations:
Break the sessions up: You don’t have to run your sessions concurrently; you can spread them out over a few weeks Session 1— Week 1, Session 2—Week 2, Session 3—Week 3, and so on). Go for momentum and build an experience/narrative arc that your teams can follow. Show the group how all the sessions fit together to meet your goals, even though they are spread out over time.
Example: Team Gathering - Name: Our Shared Past, Present and Future
Session 1: Reflect on 2021 - what’s been working + what needs work
Session 2: Current State - inventory of tools, structures + processes
Session 3: Vision for 2022 and quarterly planning
Examples for how to use time to fit your team culture:
Use existing calendar meeting time: Consider using time for your staff gathering that everyone is holding in their calendar for an existing meeting. Sure, you might need to add some additional time to the “standing meeting” times but people will appreciate not taking more time away from their regular work schedule.
Give staff time to process: A bold idea: On the days where you run staff gatherings, ask your staff to take the rest of the day off, or offer them flexibility to take time off later that week. The sentiment comes from what an “off-site” can feel like when team members get extra time off between sessions, travel to the venue or home, or extended time off. If you can, give permission to your team to unplug on the days of the department retreat.
Make OOO easier: During your opening remarks, forward everyone an “Out Of Office” email they can copy and paste. It will give your team permission to not have to multi-task and focus on the sessions you want them fully present for.
3. Staff Gatherings Like This Need to Feel Different Than All Other Meetings:
The brain craves novelty, so design your staff gathering to be different from the virtual norms and typical meetings, no matter how well you’ve mastered effective meeting planning. Your team is craving something different. Give it to them! It will help your team and will elevate the content you’re focusing on.
Examples for how to make your virtual staff gathering feel different then your typical meetings:
Put something in their hands: For a few clients, we put together staff care packages with a personalized note inside of each package explaining how we would use its contents. We include materials for the specific activities we planned, nutritious and sugary snacks, fidget tools, and company swag. We send the packages to the team members in advance of the sessions and tell them to keep the packages close by. These packages make the sessions feel different (there’s the novelty factor), help build community (since everyone received the same package), and help team members feel appreciated (the packages were accompanied by a hand written note of appreciation).
Thoughtful Pre-Work: Be thoughtful about asking your team to prepare anything for the gathering. If you ask them to do pre-work, make sure it’s compelling, a light time commitment (nothing more than 20 minutes total), and energizing instead of draining.
Pre-Work Example: In a recent staff gathering, the organization wanted to reflect on their “Work From Home” norms and approaches. The pre-work was to interview someone in your life (outside of your workplace) to learn how they are approaching work from home. We provided a guide that included interview questions to prompt inspiration. Team members were instructed to bring the interview insights to the session and be ready to share what they found interesting. Asking the group to empathetically listen to someone in their life who is experiencing something similar yet different than them created a more engaged and intrigued team ready to think about new ways of working.
4. Session Design Should Be Responsive:
What if you only planned some of your sessions and left some to design in response to real-time staff feedback? While this structure is bold and even a little scary, it works. In a time where you can’t really get the same “finger on the pulse” that in-person experiences can give you, it pays to respond to current needs. So run the sessions you know you need to run, but solicit feedback early and often, and let your team know that the feedback they provide will influence the design of the future sessions. We can all agree that the reality of working from home in the pandemic brings stress and boredom, so ask your team how they're doing and give them what they need. Figure out what can’t change, then identify and plan for the flexible elements of your design, solicit feedback, and be responsive. It will go a long way in boosting team morale when you ask people what they want and then give it (even some of it) to them.
Example of responsive facilitation design:
You set the objectives of the sessions + the times (Example: Day 1:2 hours, Day 2:2 hours)
Day 1 if fully planned and scheduled. Day 2 is 50% planned. The remaining 50% is open for one of 3 different options you’ve planned
At the end of Day 1, you can solicit feedback you’ll use to choose the plan for Day 2 (maybe you offer voting on the 3 options, maybe you ask generally, maybe you’re flexible enough to design something new based on what your team says they need).
5. A Small and Mighty Planning Team:
When designing a staff gathering, work with a small, dynamic team who are hungry to show up and give their colleagues a meaningful experience. The best work retreat ideas come from committed teams. Ideally, your planning team is made up of folks who have the authority to make quick decisions. To get started, the planning team should ask staff questions that will inform the design of the gathering, things like: When is the best time to meet (dates and times of day)? What do team members need most this week/this month/at this point in the pandemic?
6. Teams that Meet Should Eat!
It’s simple: Make sure your team is fed during your session. Budget for your team members to expense food delivery and healthy snacks to eat during your staff gatherings. Better yet, re-imagine how your team can virtually “share” a culinary experience. The sentiment here is to share something that is “in real life” even though you are meeting virtually.
Example from a recent client all-staff gathering The Group Forward designed:
Context: The organization had remote and distributed teams across the US (with different time zones too).
Activity: We sent a survey out to all attendees asking them what cuisine they would want to indulge in for a virtual team dining experience; the top choice was our food “theme” for the gathering. We chose a time that worked (some were eating breakfast while others were eating lunch); each participant ordered the same type of food, and the teams were able to share a tasting experience together.
Recipe share activity: To further solidify food as a team-building experience, each team member shares a family recipe related to a recent holiday. We compiled all the recipes in a shareable document, which generated excitement to try out new recipes.
7. Content Matters:
Since I don’t work where you work, it’s hard to make all the relevant recommendations in this space (as you’ll notice, most of what I’ve written here so far is about the process, set-up, and experience design…). That said, your staff gathering content also needs to kick ass.
Here are some helpful, relevant and inspiring content topics that I’ve seen come up for all-staff and leadership team gatherings from multiple organizations:
Learning Organizations are Healthy: How has your team been doing under virtual working conditions? And how are you getting ready for a hybrid work-place reality? Could you run a team retrospective to learn what’s been working, what hasn’t, and what’s next?
Make More Progress with Diversity and Inclusion Work: How does DEI + REI show up in your 2022 annual planning? What’s most important to the values of your organization and your team’s priorities?
Walking the Talk on Wellness, Mental Health + Burnout: How can your gathering incorporate best practices, tools, and skills around these themes?
Operating on a Shorter Planning Cycle: “Back to normal” is unknown, so how are you adjusting your strategy?
Your Organizational Pivot: How have we pivoted during the pandemic, and what’s our next move? How do we continue to build in resiliency into our structure, processes, and culture?
Community-Building: How is your organization connecting? What do they need from each other to do your best work in 2022? Maybe its skill sharing, talent mapping, curated breakout groups, or intriguing “get to know you” activities?
8. Shameless Plug: Hire an Outside Facilitator to Do It All for You:
Obviously, I can’t remove my bias here, but let me put it this way: Professional facilitators love designing and facilitating these types of staff experiences. We love love love this stuff like a wedding planner loves spreadsheets. Like America loves “Friends” reruns. Like when your baby sleeps through the night for the first time. You get the point—facilitators live for this stuff. And, let’s be honest here—you’ve been at this unrelenting and all consuming (dare I say unsustainable?) work pace for over two years. You’re a human being, and you’re really tired. You have a lot of “business as usual in a new normal reality” to manage. Stop dragging your feet and hire a facilitator who will breathe new energy into your staff gathering and design sessions your team will appreciate.
I can spend a lot of time listing out the benefits of hiring someone like me and my team of facilitators to design and run your staff gathering but I wanted to start with how we make it easier for you to do your job. So, once you hire a facilitator to run your staff gathering, it means you can a) stop worrying, b) give yourself permission to really participate in the experience and let someone else guide the process, and c) focus on everything else you need to focus on in your organization. Oh and plus, you can afford us—you don’t have to spend any money on travel or venue rentals! Instead, spend the money on a facilitator who can help.
Conclusion:
So there you have it. Plan your all-staff gatherings to have purpose, and be realistic with what you can accomplish in the virtual void. Give it a good name. Design the timing of your gathering with staff input and don’t overstretch your team.
The brain craves novelty, so make sure your design feels different than any other meetings you’re currently running. Be responsive—ask for feedback and use the feedback you get, even if you don’t agree with it. People love food; send them some or expense their food delivery. Make sure the content you are digging into is meaningful and high value.
Oh, and hire someone who loves this stuff to help you.
