If you’re here reading this, then we can assume you agree that great offsites have the potential to drive change, shift cultures, build teams, and inspire and retain strong employees at your company. They can catalyze collaboration, create connection and build strategy for the future.

But there’s more to a productive and community-building retreat than fun happy hours and the hope that your teams will connect in a beautiful spot you choose. If you want to inspire new, big, bold outputs or equip your employees to thrive through change or growth, you’ll need to be strategic about the input that shapes your time together. To leverage an offsite to create real, lasting impact, you’ll need a program that pushes your teams to the edge of their comfort zone. Because that is where shift happens.

So how do you make sure your offsite is successful in meeting your business’s needs and goals? Hire a retreat planner.

What a great idea!

For many of the same reasons that a bride hires a wedding planner for a wedding or a non-profit team hires an event planner for a fundraiser, a company should hire a retreat planner to design and execute on a company retreat. Doing so will ensure you’re making the most of your investment and your team’s time, while protecting and/or building key decision-makers’ reputation within company culture.

Here’s why you should hire a retreat planner to orchestrate your next offsite:

1. To conserve your resources:

Time is money, and planning a retreat takes a whole lot of time! The right planners have paved well-worn paths to save you time and hit the most important questions that need to be addressed in order to guarantee delivery on goals.

Some of those questions:

• How do you want employees to feel about the company and their place in it?
• How have you or do you hope to show them that you care?
• What do you want them to learn?
• How do you want them to return to work?

Developing not just a schedule but an experience strategy is time-consuming, complex and a big to-do that doesn’t just get crossed off your list, one and done. Project managing from start to finish is a part-time job, and as your planners, the Campowerment Crew, can take that off your plate, to minimize the work you do to less than 10 hours…total. And then you can show up and actually participate while we manage all things back-of-house.

A national pharmacy client participating in a Sales Summit planned by Campowerment.

2. To keep your team safe and taken care of:

From insurance to emergency procedures, to creating and communicating the boundaries of an environment that sets and protects expectations and interactions, we care for your people like they’re our own, before, during and in the week following the event, with communications and infrastructure to make and follow through on promises. We deliver a 5-star experience that tends to every important detail.

. . .

3. To protect your budget:

This one seems counterintuitive, but by investing in the up-front, you can avoid all hidden fees, taxes, gratuities and last-minute vendor needs. We anticipate these needs and lead with everything, so you know exactly where you’ll net out.

. . .

Snap, Inc. at a team offsite produced by Campowerment, in Los Angeles, CA

4. To bring out-of-the-box ideas that catalyze your targeted results:

Different input to employee experience = different output in the ways employees engage with one another and your brand.

. . .

Some statS to bolster not just a retreat but a strategic, well-planned experience for your team:

• • Engagement improves performance: Companies that have engaged employees outperform those that don’t by 202%. (Source: Forbes)
  • Inspiration multiplies output: It would take 2.25 satisfied employees to generate the same output as 1 inspired employee. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
  • Happiness elevates value: The stock prices of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” rose 14% per year from 1998 to 2005, while companies not on the list only reported a 6% increase. (Source: Harvard Business Review)
  • Development Raises Retention: Offering career training and development would keep 86% of millennials from leaving their current place of work. And reduced turnover means less investment (financial and time) in onboarding, training, and development. (Source: Willis Tower Watson)
  • Shared Experiences Boost Productivity: Researchers studying leadership found a productivity uptick of 18% in teams in which leaders fostered shared experiences among employees. (Source: University of New South Wales)

Working with a retreat planner like Campowerment ensures you maximize your investment in the offsite and delivers on the goals set out.

Not convinced? Set up a discovery call and learn how Campowerment is catalyzing connection and change in organizations like yours.