Corporate Retreats: Six Essential Design Principles

Corporate retreats or external sites provide an opportunity to team up, plan, reflect, and strategize. They can elicit the response “Oh no! Not another waste of time!” to “Wow! I’m looking forward to it.” This article introduces six design principles to help your next corporate retreat hit the mark.

1. Be strategic about what you want to achieve:

One of the common corporate retreat mistakes is setting too many or too few goals. Be strategic in what you want to achieve.

Ask yourself: What do you want to achieve during the retreat? As a result of the withdrawal? What do you want the staff to take away? What are your biggest priorities? What foundation do you want to create for the staff team?

Be as specific as possible, making your goals measurable. As the old adage says, “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get done.”

two. Involve employees in designing a retreat:

Retreats often fail because employees are not involved in the design of the retreat. What would employees like to see covered? Find a balance between corporate goals and what employees really want to cover. Is it an 80/20 mix? A 50/50 mix?

The retreat facilitator can survey employees to assess what they would like to see included and gather their expectations of the retreat process and outcomes. This can be done in staff meetings, if the teams are small enough through a one-on-one discussion, or through an email or web-based survey tool.

3. Less is more – make sure you schedule enough time:

A common pitfall with retreat design is that everything tends to get thrown around. In your design work, make sure all stakeholders are clear about what really needs to be covered versus what they would like to see covered. It may be helpful to categorize potential topics into What is essential, What would be nice, and What can wait for another time or forum.

Less really is more in terms of impact. Allow enough time during the retreat for participants to discuss relevant issues and reflect. It is also important to allow time for participants to create an action plan, linking the retreat discussions to the workplace. If not all of your topics can fit into the retreat you have scheduled, consider adding an extra day to the retreat or scheduling another one offsite later in the year.

Four. Choose a facilitator wisely

Who will facilitate your withdrawal? An external facilitator provides the benefits of neutrality and complete focus and dedication throughout the retreat process. When looking at the option of a third-party facilitator, choose a facilitator who is committed to partnering with your organization for the long term, at least for several withdrawal processes. This will foster greater trust with your team, allowing subsequent withdrawals to start from a higher level. The external facilitator will also develop a better sense of your corporate priorities, culture, and vision over time. When using a new external facilitator, be sure to spend enough time debriefing, including discussions about expectations, results, and your past experience with retreats—what worked and what didn’t.

Since corporate priorities can change over time, be sure to allow plenty of planning time and that the facilitator can adapt the program to meet rapidly changing needs. To ensure success with an external facilitator, create an internal retreat planning team that can serve as a liaison throughout the process, ensuring a perfect fit.

Internal retreat leaders also play an important role within the retreat process, bringing “insider” insights into what the organization is about, culture, and priorities. If an internal retreat leader is used, make sure they have sufficient authority and reach to assume their role. You may also consider pairing an internal facilitator with an external facilitator.

5. Make it Regular!

To gain the same “traction” you have in retirement, make regular withdrawals and not just once a year. Schedule half days or full days out of the office several times a year for departments and, if possible, the entire organization. Virtual withdrawals can also be used to provide mini-withdrawal processes throughout the year, without the additional expense of time and money in an external location.

6. Follow up:

Create the learning link back to the office – Many times the learning is left at the retreat location and unfortunately does not transfer back to the office. Throughout the retirement process, ask yourself: What can we do to bring this learning back to the office? What systems do we already have in place that can be leveraged to discuss learning from our retreat? What systems should we create?

To strengthen the learning bond back to the office, schedule time during the retreat to create action plans, at the individual, team, departmental, and/or corporate level. Action plans should identify timeframes, resources needed, and who is responsible. Action plans should be as specific as possible. Action plans need to be tracked, either as part of regular team meetings, through one-on-one with managers, or through other internal systems.

To keep the learning alive, consider holding group or team training sessions after the retreat with smaller teams or individual employees. Monthly or bi-monthly sessions can support the transfer of learning to the workplace.

With these six design principles in mind, your next retreat should be meaningful, engaging, and sustainable, leaving your employees wondering “When are we going to do this again?”

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