If you are anything at all like us listed here at TravelPerk, you enjoy a good yearly (or if you’re blessed, biannual) group offsite. This is a terrific opportunity to get collectively with the people today you do the job with, get motivated, align objectives, make a couple reminiscences, and extra than most likely witness at minimum a person of your colleagues leap in the pool entirely clothed. Oh yes, it’s took place to us.
When you search for “best group offsites”, you usually come across pictures of content colleagues sitting together at a rural retreat, by some type of physique of water, or taking part in childhood games as grown ups, with smiles beaming at the digicam. And while points like site, teambuilding games, foods, and amenities can make or split an offsite – it is truly the setting up of it which is really what sets it apart. Think of an offsite like your preferred cake – it is not adequate to just have all the ingredients, you have to blend them together in the ideal way and in the suitable buy to make it all fluffy and scrumptious.
That is why we made a decision to give you our top secret recipe for the ideal workforce offsite possible. Your offsite agenda is the vital to the entire party, so here’s how to get started.
Laying the groundwork
Just before you can get into the nitty-gritty of your offsite assembly agenda, you need to have to get the massive image initially. Request on your own these issues as you get started arranging this enjoyable event:
- How long do you want this event to be?
We commonly advise 2 times with 1 overnight keep. Significantly less than that helps make it a much more everyday teambuilding party fairly than an offsite, and just about anything way too significantly lengthier can choose too considerably of your colleague’s particular time. This is our sweet location! - When do you want the offsite to take put?
Finding the proper day of the week is just as critical as buying the proper period to go. We’re headquartered in Barcelona, so we like to get advantage of the sea and the sun. That’s why we are inclined to run our primary offsites in September and October – just right after the holiday seasons so folks are awesome and rested, but not so considerably into Q3 that people today are overwhelmed with perform. We also counsel managing your offsite from Thursday to Friday. People today are likely to be extra enthusiastic towards the conclude of the week, and this way you’re not taking time absent from their weekends! - Where will your offsite consider area?
Make positive you have picked out a place that is not also close or far too much away from your decide on-up stage. You want persons to sense like they are staying whisked away, but not like they’re becoming transported off to Timbuktu. - What form of offsite is it likely to be?
Namely, you need to have to determine if you want this to be principally a bonding encounter for teammates or if it has extra of a strategic part. “Both” is a properly genuine respond to! You can strategy a excellent kick-off, for instance, wherever you talk about targets, goals, and approaches for the future year – and you can sprinkle in a couple fun group-building activities as you go! - What is your price range?
Retain an eye out for your spending budget. It is extremely quick to around or underspend, and equally scenarios can be the death of your offsite. Understand what you can do with the dollars that you have been given, and attempt to think outside the house the box when you use it! - Who is attending?
This may well seem foolish for the reason that the clear respond to is “the whole team”. But truly, it is not these kinds of an effortless dilemma. You have to imagine about staff in distinct cases – for case in point, do you include contractors in your offsite? What about colleagues who sit concerning several groups? What do you do with team users from distinctive hubs? You have to choose the parameters of who your offsite is for and alter it appropriately.

Our 1 and only offsite workforce meeting agenda template
Before you go
- Set up a Slack channel for your team where by they can request any queries in progress pertaining to the approaching offsite. People will no doubt want to inquire you matters, specially if your occasion involves an overnight ingredient.
- Type out your speakers. One of the major functions of an offsite team meeting is for absolutely everyone inside that crew to achieve visibility around what everybody else is undertaking. That is why it’s significant for you to get a speaker from each individual “sub-team” to get a small bit of air time to describe what they’ve been up to and what’s coming next.
- Assign a designated observe-taker. It’s always beneficial to file these periods, no matter if that is digitally or by asking people today to take notes for the workforce. Assembly minutes will stop up staying incredibly useful when colleagues get again to their day-to-day responsibilities and have to have to get started developing an motion system!
Working day 1
Thursday early morning
- Have the crew meet up with brilliant and early (but not way too early, you don’t want grumpy faces in the photographs) at a designated locale in which they will be picked up by transport. Give them 15 minutes of leeway to arrive ahead of you acquire off!
- Make time for coffee and snacks upon arrival. Give folks time to verify in, settle into their rooms and deliver them with espresso and snacks to make them experience far more cozy and welcome. And, do not get the dull biscuits with no chocolate on them!

Thursday late early morning – afternoon
- Assemble absolutely everyone in just one house. Commonly a convention area-fashion set up is finest and most snug for the periods ahead. Make certain every person has a location to sit and present them with a notebook and some pens, as properly as h2o bottles.
- Start by likely by the agenda merchandise. Notify your crew what to anticipate out of the upcoming day or so, and depart time for concerns.
- Get the ball rolling with a couple icebreaker games! Location up a entertaining quiz on applications like Kahoot can really get individuals into the swing of things. Asking them thoughts about other team associates and about enterprise details can be a pleasurable way for persons to get to know just one another! You can also feel about game titles like two truths and a lie, guess that childhood photograph, or have a terrible joke contest!
- Launch into your round of highlight classes. Give each individual group a preset quantity of time to operate retrospectives on what they’ve been undertaking, emphasize sizeable ongoing or impending assignments, share what they’re planning, or choose you by means of essential metrics. About 30 minutes for each really should do the trick! Get started with 2-3 of these periods.
Thursday afternoon – early night
- Break for lunch! Really don’t consider to torpedo individuals into listening to 6 several hours of shows in a row. Just after about 2.5 – 3 several hours, give them an hour’s lunch split to chat and refuel.
- Resume highlight sessions. Keep going with a different 2-3 spotlight sessions after lunch. Make guaranteed you’ve specified each and every group enough time to existing what they experienced prepared and depart a number of minutes at the end of each session for queries.
- Operate a imaginative team exercise. Split your staff into scaled-down teams of about 5 or 6 and assign them a hard and imaginative endeavor. This can be just about anything from a basic brainstorming session about an future challenge to a whole-scale strategic arranging session for a fictitious situation. The plan listed here is to blend people today up with crew customers they really don’t essentially function with on a each day foundation and give them a obstacle to consider out of the box. This will really aid them connect with a single yet another and will hone their difficulty-resolving abilities!
- Wrap up the day’s function. Complete the day’s workshop classes with a short recap of what was coated that day. Choose people today through what is in keep for them that night and touch base on your motion products for the subsequent working day.
Thursday night
- Give folks a little bit of totally free time. The day’s been extreme – they should have a break! Enable persons go back again to their rooms, freshen up, acquire a nap, or phone their people. You’d be shocked at how many of them will make a decision to use this time to cling out alongside one another in any case!
- Get men and women alongside one another for meal. Don’t forget to feed individuals! A enjoyable evening meal is a terrific way to wrap up an interesting 1st day of workshopping and team making. It is also an outstanding prospect for management workforce users to say a couple terms in a much more casual environment and definitely get folks motivated for what’s to occur.
- It’s get together time. Let us encounter it. Your teammates want to bash. Which is 1 of the big benefits of a business or staff offsite! This is exactly where friendships definitely commence to blossom and memories are produced without men and women considering and speaking about OKRs, scheduling meetings, and optimizing workflows.

Working day 2
Friday morning
- Start off the working day correct with a staff breakfast. Don’t make it as well early and permit folks sleep in a minor to get well from the party the night time ahead of. Our idea is to get individuals with each other all-around 9 or 10 in the morning and give them a hearty breakfast!
- Operate a enjoyment teambuilding activity. Imagine out of the box and make persons do a little something new and fascinating! Probably it can be a scavenger hunt in the woods. Perhaps it’s an egg drop contest from the roof of your accommodation building. Perhaps it is a human knot. Either way, get people transferring and wondering creatively!
- Allow folks obtain their items and provide an optional lunch. Permit people wrap up their offsite in their very own way. Some may want to pack and have a gentle lunch with teammates. Some others may well want to keep the fun likely and go for a wander with their colleagues. Give men and women the choice to finish the party the way they want to.
- Get all people again dwelling! Make absolutely sure all people is informed of the specified departure time. Constantly give 10-15 minutes of leeway to make confident anyone has got all the things. Complete off the occasion stress-free!
Following the party
Once the party is above, there are a number of issues you ought to do to make absolutely sure every person bought the most out of the expertise:
- Send out a comply with-up email to every person inquiring for suggestions on this function. Involve the hyperlink to a quick survey where by you can fully grasp what you did proper and the place there’s area for advancement.
- Share the meeting notes from the highlight periods with the complete workforce. They will no question come in useful when teams begin creating programs for the upcoming quarter!
- Give all people accessibility to a picture folder. Photos from occasions normally put a smile on people’s faces!
- Diligently review your budget right after the truth. Hold all receipts and invoices for your finance team and for your possess reference for approaching gatherings.
- Get ready for your future occasion!