Would you pay $150,000 or more for a company or team offsite that employees said they liked the next day, but forgot about one week later? Believe it or not, that’s what many of us are doing. 

Corporate offsites are not a new practice, but in this new world of work, they have become much higher stakes -  especially if folks only get together 1 or 2 times a year. 

Frequency is one reason. Another is their use - often we reach for offsites not just to have fun but to fix something internally - to spark movement or change, fuel connection, build company culture, or more.

An increase in offsites means it’s increasingly important we learn to design and lead ones that directly affect behavior and the employee experience when desired. 

Asked to plan or design an offsite? Here’s how to start to help ensure your offsite sticks:

1. Begin with the end in mind 

I often receive pings asking for a fun activity, an interesting guest speaker, or a piece of content to include in an offsite. This is like packing for a vacation before you know where you’re going. “What are you trying to achieve?”, I ask. 

Instead of starting with content, get crystal clear on outcomes. If we don’t know what our desired outcomes or effect is, it makes it much harder to know what to include, and what not to. This is how agendas pile up, and feelings unfortunately get hurt.

Avoid creating a checklist of content and instead, ask yourself and your stakeholders these questions:

1. What will be different because of our time together? 

2. What do we need from the people we’re trying to affect? 

3. How will we know we’ve succeeded - can we tell a before and after story? 

4. What would I see through a camera lens that would tell me we’ve succeeded?

Start from critical incidents or examples happening in your organization, and unpack how these will be different after the offsite.  Clarity on outcomes drives everything else, including how you can measure success. Aim for no more than 3 outcomes. 

2. Get buy-in from the business and attendees

As the old organizational development adage goes, involvement leads to commitment. Once you have clarity on your outcomes, spend time soliciting feedback with a select group of attendees (or all, if it’s a small group).

This small gesture shows attendees that you want their input and care about their needs and issues. Their feedback can also help you clarify how each of these outcomes affects the business, learn what's at stake for each department, and get people thinking early on about how they can carry forward the offsite into their day-to-day life. 

3. Focus on foundation first, decorations second

The value of offsites is less in the logistics and more in what’s said and done before, during, and after.

A married couple can blame a failed marriage on their wedding venue, food, or decorations, but marriage success comes down to their commitment, trust, and how they work together to achieve their common goal. 

When offsites don’t have the lasting impact we want we tend to blame the venue, the content, or the guest speaker. These are what I call ‘decorations’. None of this matters without the right foundation, our strategy.  Make the foundation (like clear objectives) your focus.  

4. Craft a narrative, not an agenda

Curating an agenda is one of the last steps of off-site preparation - not the first. It’s like the bag you wrap a sandwich in - first you need the bread, meat, hunger, etc.

When it comes time to craft your agenda, ensure a near-obsessive tie back to your desired outcomes and business objectives. For each desired outcome plan one or more experiences, exercises, or discussions. Ask yourself, what does the group need to do? 

Instead of a list of sessions, chunk the off-site into these outcomes and describe for employees how each step leads them there - like the steps in a recipe instead of simply a list of ingredients. 

Not only does this ensure focus but it helps put the material in context for people and avoids employees wasting precious cognitive resources wondering why we’re doing what they’re doing and how it connects. 

5. Don’t skip norming

Many of us are a little, if not a lot, rusty when it comes to gathering. We may not know, or remember how to be with each other. 

Call it ground rules, norms, agreements, social contracts, etc - establish in the first hour of your off-site how you’ll work together to achieve your desired outcomes. What productive dynamics do you need to agree to?

Formalizing the process of how we’ll work together during the offsite can help establish safety and trust, and get the group co-creating from the start. Airlines never skip their safety demonstration (which is simply an explanation of norms and expectations) - neither should you.

6. Clarify how we will go forward 

Educator and scholar John Dewey said it best, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.”

Offsites alone don’t necessarily lead to learning - it’s the reflection and processing that does. We often pump our offsites so full of content that we leave little space or time for not just reflection, but application.

Engage the group is asking and answering:

Reflection

1. What are a-ha’s and takeaways?

So much learning comes in the comparison of perspectives

Application

1. How will we go forward because of what we’ve learned together?

2. How will we work together because of what we’ve learned?

3. What could get in the way?

Have the group get specific with each other about what comes next and what could get in the way. The difference between an informed versus engaged offsite is often this lack of reflection. I call it education without implementation. 

We fix offsites when we get better at creating connection and not just content

Instead of asking if folks had fun on our next offsite, we can ask if our efforts stuck. 

How do you know if the change we want to make will stick? It’s not because of content alone, it’s how or if your employees connect to it. 

Fueling connection comes from having clear objectives, giving employees skin in the game, focusing on foundation, crafting a narrative, not forgetting norming, and focusing on how we will go forward. These steps help ensure we are capitalizing on our (and our employee's) investment of time, energy, and money, and our most precious resource: attention. 

Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps HR & business leaders create experiences that boost motivation, engagement, and performance

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