{"id":275,"date":"2022-06-17T22:41:16","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T22:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flytographer.com\/blog\/best-company-retreat-ideas-planning-remote-team-offsite\/"},"modified":"2022-06-17T22:41:16","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T22:41:16","slug":"best-company-retreat-ideas-planning-remote-team-offsite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flyphotoprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/best-company-retreat-ideas-planning-remote-team-offsite\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Company Retreat Ideas for Planning Your Remote Team Offsite"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Written by: Nicole Smith, Founder + CEO<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

How do you deepen company culture and create a sense of belonging in a remote-first workplace? Many companies are wrestling with this challenge as employees no longer come into a shared office space every day. This is even more difficult when onboarding brand new team members \u2013 primarily with Slack and Zoom. One solution is hosting a company retreat! It\u2019s an opportunity to create shared memories, build community and get everyone excited and aligned about the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our company (like many) abruptly went fully remote in March 2020. Prior to that, we had a fun, highly social work environment in a beautiful heritage building in downtown Victoria, Canada. Relationships organically grew over coffee shop dates, happy hours, spin classes, and team bonding activities like lunchtime board games, 2000-piece puzzles, and Prosecco Fridays. When our office closed, we also downsized from 21 to 4 employees; the pause in global travel shut down our sales overnight. Over the last two years, as we slowly (very, very slowly) saw business recover, we leaned into building a remote team that now spans from Honolulu to Montreal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today we have eighteen people (eleven of whom joined in the last 10 months!). We have gotten together over virtual events, Zoom trivia and online game nights, but knew it was time to invest in a corporate retreat getaway to meet IRL. We chose the beautiful setting of Whistler, BC for a 2-\u00bd day getaway.<\/span><\/p>\n

When planning our offsite, I wanted our getaway to be a mix of 50% fun and 50% work-related ideas. In this post, I share all the retreat planning steps Flytographer took, from setting goals, to planning logistics, to specific programming, to team-building activities, keeping the power of designing \u201cmemorable moments\u201d in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Emily in Whistler for Flytographer.<\/strong><\/a> A photo of our whole team with the mountains behind us in Whistler.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Aly in Victoria for Flytographer.<\/strong><\/a> A photo of Flytographer Natalie<\/a> (based in Honolulu) taking a film photo.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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1. Set Offsite Goals<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What are the outcomes you are seeking? Your goals are the first place to start, as they will impact everything else you plan for your company retreat. We had three:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Team bonding.<\/strong> Build trust and a sense of belonging among teams with fun shared memories. <\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Deepen company culture and knowledge<\/strong>.<\/strong> For us this meant a refresh on our company\u2019s 9-year history, values, our future vision and deeper insight into our individual teams, key customers and photographer community.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Brainstorm great ideas.<\/strong> We mapped out brainstorm sessions into this event so everyone had an opportunity to contribute and see themselves in our company\u2019s future.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Photo: Emily in Whistler for Flytographer.<\/strong><\/a> A photo of our whole team having fun on our photoshoot together.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    2. Create a Theme<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Now that you have your company retreat goals, you may want to consider a motivational theme or word that you can weave throughout the programming. Our offsite theme was \u201cRising\u201d because we are:<\/span><\/p>\n