Remote work continues to grow in popularity.
Due to this, a lot of companies now adopt it to build a team of employees around the world.
Not only that, more people now prefer to work remotely as compared to working in a typical office environment.
Recent research by Flexjobs shows that over the last decade, there has been about 91% growth in remote work.
Also, Buffer in its state of remote work, which had about 2471 survey participants, reports that about 99% of respondents indicate that they’ll like to work remotely either for some time or for the rest of their career.
This shows that working remotely isn’t just a trend, it’s a way of work that has come to stay.
To make employees more productive, and have a company-wide strategy session where each employee participates actively in person, remote companies now organize retreats periodically.
This is highly commendable as it makes employees meet one another, learn from each other, and also make contributions that’d help the company grow.
In this post, I want to share with you how you can use a company retreat to create an unforgettable experience for your remote employees.
Let’s get started.
Ask Your Employees Where They’d Love to Visit
When working with remote employees, chances are that you have people on your team who have never visited some places other than their country of residence.
In most cases, they have some places they’d like to travel to but haven’t got the opportunity to do so.
Since they’re working on your team, the company retreat could be a means for them to achieve their life-long goals of visiting these specific places.
This is why it’s recommended that you should ask your employees if they have places in mind which they’d like to visit. If they do, you can take a look at all their suggestions and then streamline the options that you have further.
Doing this makes them part of the decision process and will make them long for the company retreat and never forget about it.
Choose a Memorable Location For Your Retreat
After getting your employees’ opinions about their favorite retreat spots, chances are that you’d have a lot of cool options to choose from.
The next thing you should do is prune down this list further and select a location that every member of your team will really like.
In order to do this, you can search on Google for some fun facts and places to visit during your retreat in each location. When you identify a location that has a lot of attraction sites for tourists, which you think your team will love, you can settle down for those.
Alternatively, you can make use of tour companies such as Inspiring Vacations. Services such as this provide you with more detailed information about different locations across the world.
They also let you know when it’s best for your team to visit specific cities and give you tips about the awesome things you and your team can do throughout your retreat.
That way, you can choose a location that is memorable for everyone on your team
Have a Proper Timing For Your Company Retreat
Timing is essential for anything you do as a business owner. When it comes to organizing a company retreat, choosing a period that makes sense for everyone will make it an unforgettable experience for all.
Take for instance, with the outbreak of the Corona Virus, organizing a company retreat at this period will be ill-advised. This is because countries are taking precautionary measures against the spread of the virus, and travelling with your team members at this point might be risky.
Also, when choosing a time for your company retreat, you should respect the time of your employees too.
While you’d want your employees to have a feel of being around other team members, if the timing for the retreat is too long, they might find it boring eventually.
This is why a remote-first company such as Zapier generally organize their annual company retreats within 7 days.
Doing this helps your team members to relish the little time they spent with other co-workers.
Decide on What Everyone Would Be Doing Throughout the Retreat
If you want to have a memorable company retreat for your remote employees, then you should have a plan in place. Without one, you might end up wasting resources and the time of the attendees.
Before the retreat, you should map out exactly what you want every member of the team to be doing on a daily basis.
Say, if there’s a company-wide strategy session you want everyone to participate in, then you should include it in your plan.
Also, if there are team sessions you would like your employees to play a role in, you should also add it too.
You can also play games, hike, swim, visit specific sites in the host city, and so on.
Conclusion
If you’ve never organized a company retreat for your remote employees, the tips shared in this post will help you to create one of an awesome experience for them.
Which of these tips do you plan to use when planning the next retreat for your company’s remote employees?
Kindly share your thoughts in the comment box.