If you're looking for new ideas for your corporate retreats, you're not alone. Any company who has taken their teams offsite for brainstorming, bonding, or building culture can tell you that there are a few keys to a great retreat.
Here are three ways to make your next company retreat an effective, memorable experience for your employees.
Top 3 Must-Haves for Corporate Retreats
The top three most important things to planning a successful company offsite event are location, out-of-the-box creative thinking, and memorable activities.
If you can nail down each one of those, you're well on your way to a great offsite. Here's more about how these three factors shape your event.
1. Locations for corporate retreats
The standard meeting room at the local fancy hotel is nice and all but consider some more creative options.
Breaking outside the typical scene of 4-walls and conference table can do wonders for camaraderie and creativity.
How about a weekend camping trip with the whole team? Or a river-rafting excursion? Take over a small town for the weekend and explore the local scene. Maybe spend a week volunteering out of the country or for an at-risk population.
Related: Best Corporate Offsite Locations in Your Own Town
2. Corporate retreat ideas: "Wouldn't it be cool if..."
If the purpose of your retreat is to get out of a stagnant thought process, picture the whole retreat as a big fun game of "Wouldn't it be cool if..."
With this line of thinking, there are no bad ideas, and no ideas that are too big or too small.
- Wouldn't it be cool if we tripled our sales numbers?
- Wouldn't it be cool if our employees had unlimited vacation days?
- Wouldn't it be cool if we outsourced these projects that take up too much time?
- Wouldn't it be cool if we had 100% employee participation in the wellness program?
Resist all urges to think about how much money these ideas would cost, or any other reasons why something wouldn't work.
The key is to encourage creative thinking about any and all ways the company, or your culture, could improve.
If everyone in the company is encouraged to be innovative without anyone putting down their ideas, surprising things can happen. After generating a huge list of pie-in-the-sky ideas, you'll begin to see which ones actually have some merit. There may be some ideas there that could save the company money in the long run, or draw in more talent, or have any number of results.
Related: 10 Best Corporate Retreat Ideas: Building Culture Offsite
3. Corporate retreat massage
Long days of brainstorming and shaping company culture can take a lot out of your team. Consider bringing in a massage therapist or yoga instructor to make those long hours more bearable.
Nothing tells employees you care like a free massage. And since company offsites are a way to do something a little different, a massage therapy service fits the bill. Many massage companies are happy to send 1 or 2 or 10 massage therapists to your company offsite meeting, wherever it may be.
If you want chair massage, your therapists can set up pretty discretely in a back corner. If you want table massage, you'll want a private room. In either case, your massage therapists will come equipped with all they need to help you create a memorable company offsite event.
Related: What to Expect at Your First Table Massage Event
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