3 QUICK HACKS For Planning Your Next Offsite!
Time to get out of dodge?! You’re talking our language!
If you’d like a 20 minute offsite planning consultation with our team, click here. Typically, we save our clients dozens hours of research and planning and are able to deliver a highly customized experience. The consultation call alone will get you going in the right direction!
A successful company offsite can have massive ROI on so many levels for any size team. Getting away from the office allows colleagues to connect in meaningful and more organic ways. It’s not uncommon for a major challenge to be solved while thinking outside of the box while outside of the office.
We have broken down these tools into the primary elements of most offsites that we plan and manage with our clients. They break down as follows: Venue, Food + Drink, Experiences, Workspace, Team Building, Transportation.
Here are our top 6 tools for planning your next offsite experience for your team.
1. The Venue
Offsite Planning Hack #1: Finding the Perfect Venue
Before we had a database of 10k+ venues ideal for offsites from California to New York; we used a variety of website and services to creatively find the perfect venue for our clients.
Depending on the vibe of your team, the goals of the offsite and the vision you have for the event; you will be searching for different types of venues. We always like to start with a buy-out opportunity for our clients. This steers us away, initially anyway, from major hotels, resorts and lodges. Aside from losing the exclusive feel, we tend see increased F&B costs and higher room rates that can drive budgets out the window.
For an initial venue search, we start with website like The Knot, Wedding Wire, Resort and Lodges and Airbnb and VRBO.
2. Food + Drinks
Offsite Planning Hack #2: Organizing Food + Drink
Organizing food and drink so that everyone is comfortable and taken care can be a hectic undertaking, for any size team. We want to have an exact idea of all food preferences and allergies.
We recommend using a Google Form or similar to collect the food and drink preferences from your team. You will use this form to arrange all elements of the retreat. From rooming lists to an itinerary and the food and drink preferences. These can be easily shared with restaurants, caterers and private chefs.
3. Experiences
Offsite Planning Hack #3: Experiences
The Offsite Co. is founded on the principle that experiences drive bonds between people better than anything else. It’s important to find a good balance between organic and structured bonding experiences while away with your team.
Hopefully, your workforce is incredibly diverse and you have people interested in all different things with all different skill sets. Our recommendation is to have at least one company-wide experience that everyone can enjoy together. Then, we like to follow that up with what we call a-la-carte experiences. Find the top 3 (or so) activities or experiences local to the venue or destination. Send a out a form to your team and ask people to sign-up for an activity.
“I sort of begrudgingly signed-up for the consultation call. From the beginning of the call, The Offsite Co. team made it clear they were not selling anything and just wanted to help create a great experience for our team. They gave me so much information and tips for planning the retreat on my own and I can’t thank them enough. They even introduced me to some of their best vendors in Park City!”
If you’d like a 20 minute offsite planning consultation with our team, click here. Typically, we save our clients dozens hours of research and planning and are able to deliver a highly customized experience. The consultation call alone will get you going in the right direction!