How to measure the impact of your company retreat
How to measure the impact of your company retreat
BoomPop Team · 11/22/2022
Are offsites worth it? Here’s how to track and measure the benefits of a company retreat.
A recent article by Inc. shared that huge companies like Salesforce and Airbnb have adopted work from anywhere policies. But, they also require attendance at company retreats a few times a year. Why? The benefits of team offsites are invaluable.
Talking to CEOs that have hosted their first team offsite, they’re no longer asking the question, “Are offsites worth it?” They’ve seen the impact in communication channels, employee engagement, and more. They understand that the investment is earned back with ease.
That said, nearly 75% of our BoomPop clients are planning an offsite for the first time. With that in mind, it’s sometimes hard for organizers and leaders to know what to expect. How do you know what kind of impact to expect? How do you track and measure the impact of your investment in team connection?
In this post, we’re going to give you all the tips you need to get started measuring the impact of team building events and retreats.
Setting clear goals and KPIs from the get-go
First things first, you can’t track impact if you don’t know what you’re measuring. We always recommend the first step towards designing a company retreat that cultivates impact is figuring out what “impact” means to your organization. Every team has unique goals, and that needs to be reflected in how you approach events.
Here are a few great areas for goal & KPI setting to ensure that your offsite is worth it.
Morale
If, during a recent employee pulse survey, results for morale and engagement are low and you’re seeing high turnover numbers, morale should be a top priority. It’s much more cost-effective to invest in retreats to increase excitement and engagement than spending to replace and onboard new team members.
The Goal:
Increase team member engagement by 20% post-company retreat.
The KPI:
See a 20% positive increase among retreat attendees for the following questions on the next pulse survey:
How likely are you to recommend [your company name] to your friends and family?
How strongly connected do you feel connected to [your company name]’s values and mission?
Revenue
If the competition in your field is steep and you’re struggling to compete, a company retreat is a great spot to get brainstorming on new services or offerings to infuse more capital into your organization.
The Goal:
Generate a new product and/or service idea to infuse $XX,XXX in revenue to the bottom line within the next 24 months.
The KPI:
We leave the retreat with 3 ideas to hash out, one idea will be implemented in the next year ready to sell, and $XX,XXX in sales will be seen in the second calendar year post-retreat.
Marketing
The job market is fierce right now. Candidates are seeking companies that are remote-first and offering great perks. In fact, LinkedIn says remote jobs are attracting more than half of their total search traffic.
So, why not use your offsite as a way to generate marketing materials for your recruitment efforts?
The Goal:
Cultivate a portfolio of imagery, video, and audio clips to utilize in a post-retreat marketing campaign for
The KPIs:
500 images, 20 minutes of b-roll, 3 interviews about employee experience, and audio clips from sessions delivered to the marketing team for campaign generation.
A 10% increase in applications upon implementation of the campaign within 90 days of the company offsite.
For company offsites, many of the benefits are long-term—which you’ll notice in the KPIs above. You’ll want to keep this in mind when creating your own goals.
Sending post-offsite surveys to attendees upon departure
While some of the goals and KPIs are measured in the long term, it is possible to see immediate impact as well. The best way to do this is a post-company retreat survey.
You can not only ask what they thought of the retreat itself, but how the experience impacted their overall feelings on the company, their role, etc. The responses are the best way to not only plan better team offsites, but also ensure your employees are engaged, happy, and productive.
Not sure where to start with a post-offsite survey? We have a whole post with tips, tricks, and over 25 actual questions to make it super simple for you.
Monitoring connections to organizational health
While the surveys are great at uncovering thoughts about the destination, activities, sessions, and short-term impact, you do want to go a little bit deeper with long-term impact monitoring.
What does this mean exactly?
Well, a healthy organization is one that has engaged, productive, and happy employees and customers.
So, you can do quarterly reporting on things like retention and satisfaction, absenteeism, productivity monitoring, and customer satisfaction to see if there’s a direct correlation between those who attended the company retreat and positive growth. This helps make events a meaningful part of your overall engagement strategy, not just a one-off perk.
Want help planning a company offsite with positive ROI?
Offsite planning is easier with BoomPop. Let’s chat about what impact you’re looking to generate. From there, our team of experts will match you with the most impactful destination and activities as possible for your unique team.
Featured resources
8 Steps for Planning Your Company Retreat
A resource for new organizers on creating fun, productive, and successful corporate events.
