How offsites can impact team culture
How offsites can impact team culture
BoomPop Team · 4/14/2022
For remote teams, gathering in person can be a breath of fresh air—but any team’s culture can massively benefit from a company event that’s designed to create stronger connections.
Historically, offsites have served as a strategic event. There were clear questions to be answered and goals to be met, and the majority of the time spent with colleagues would be spent on business. Team building often took a backseat.
Now, most leaders have recognized that building strategy doesn’t necessarily require getting together in person—but it can have all kinds of other incredible, positive impacts on their team.
Here’s how connecting at an offsite can take your team culture to the next level.
Creating better relationships
Meeting your teammates in person can help you learn a lot about them—and not just that everyone is taller than you expected. How people communicate, from the tone of their voice to their body language, can easily get lost through a screen.
When you gather IRL, you have the opportunity to uncover all kinds of small insights that help you understand the people you work alongside each day. Even if those insights don’t have tangible results in the moment, they might make a huge difference in the long term. Communicating better can make a team more effective, less stressed, and happier.
Unlocking your team’s creativity
Unwanted isolation can kill creativity, leaving your team without the inspiration they need to do innovative, fulfilling work. That doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts the entire company and can stall progress.
Gathering in person gives you the chance to let people explore new ways of thinking. New environments, new challenges, and new interactions all set the stage for our brains to approach problem solving differently. When you unlock that creativity, people will feel more engaged in their work and the business will prosper as a result.
Developing skills, ideas, and strategies
When we come together in person to deepen our connections, we’re also tapping into the incredible amount of knowledge our coworkers have. In the confines of a virtual meeting, it can sometimes be hard to allow conversations to flow organically. This limits the discoveries we can make and the kinds of spontaneous lessons we can teach one another.
An offsite is an opportunity to see how the people around you think, work, and deal with challenges in real time. That firsthand experience can not only help you do your own work better, it can give the entire team insights that change the course of projects—and potentially even the course of an entire business.
Stepping away from work to relax and have fun
An offsite can be more than an opportunity to work together. The time you spend away from your daily tasks can actually be just as valuable, if not more.
Fun can come in the form of games or structured activities, but it can also come naturally. Giving your team time to explore the area, take walks together, have casual conversations, or choose activities of their own can create unexpected opportunities for connection. Point is, sometimes not working is where the real magic of an offsite takes place.
Planning your next offsite?
A good offsite is no easy feat. Poor planning, a lack of understanding about the team itself, and the wrong balance of work and fun can threaten to make your in person gathering feel like more of a chore than a joy. Get started planning your next offsite with our expert services to take the logistics, stress, and questions off your plate.
Featured resources
8 Steps for Planning Your Company Retreat
A resource for new organizers on creating fun, productive, and successful corporate events.
