Ideal planning for a corporate retreat

The worst thing you can do is go away for a corporate offsite without a plan or purpose in mind. 

It’s easy to fall into that trap, though. We hope that a company retreat will solidify our corporate culture, create bonding within our group, and provide that positive feedback loop that will exponentially grow our business and keep our workforce revitalized. 

But without a clear plan and some helpful guides, that retreat will not produce the outcome your company needs.  The truth is people like to be led toward a compelling vision. Offsites provide a uniquely structured space to develop your people, invite them into that clear vision, and create that bond that makes work more exciting and productive. This is why we tell everyone to remember to Plan Backwards. 

Think about it; you don’t go into any significant business venture blind. You visualize your goals, set your compass, and reverse engineer every step to ensure you hit that goal. The same thing works when you're dealing with your people. You want your company to be a great place to work, thrive in the marketplace, and have a culture that motivates people and keeps them rejuvenated day after day. 

This is why at The Oaks, we take care to work with you to make a plan for what your people and your company need out of an offsite. We have curated the best-facilitated content and facilities to help each group relax, connect, and refocus on why your company exists. We do more than offer a beautiful space to unwind (vacations are great, but they don’t make people excited to get back to work); we make sure to design the right path and content with each of our companies to your specific people are motivated and connected. 

We know that with the right plan, great facilities, and excellent guides, your company offsite can energize your people for the next year to come and establish the culture you desire.

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Why Host a corporate retreat?

These days, it’s more important than ever to get away as a team. A corporate retreat is the perfect setting for many companies to build relationships, trust and solidify their culture. 

What is corporate culture, anyway?

Culture is the way things are- naturally and automatically. It’s how you operate together, treat one another, and how things are pre-determined to go. Culture is what we all believe to be right, true, and good- and how we act upon those beliefs. 

Culture is the foundation of your company, and it drives everything. It’s the expression of your company’s purpose and gives meaning to everything that happens. It determines how people speak to and interact with everyone around them. Culture is about your expectations and hopes. It’s about how you manage problems and anxieties. Culture is the single most critical feature in the life of a company. It determines how people feel about coming to work, it determines how your employees talk about your company, and most important, it determines what naturally happens in terms of your outcomes.

It’s tough to shape a company culture to be inclusive, collaborative, and resilient when most of you work remotely. Remote work is, for all intents and purposes, here to stay. So what will your company do to counteract the isolation, fatigue, and shallow depth of relationships that are inevitable from remote work?

The best place to build your corporate culture is together outside of your typical work setting over several days. In fact, a well-executed corporate retreat can supercharge your culture in ways that will pay dividends for years to come. Through shared experiences, time together, and content that shapes your conversations, the relationships built at a corporate retreat can help your team grow stronger, more efficient, and more effective. 

A corporate retreat offers you the opportunity to redefine how you operate together. You get to establish new traditions and a better understanding of who everyone is motivated, who motivates them, and who is beyond their work persona. A robust culture will help you handle complexity, risk, and uncertainty. It will enable your people to understand their role. 

That’s why we take such great care at the Oaks to design experiences that align with your values and goals for your corporate culture. By spending time in a beautiful, relaxed environment and offering facilitated content to guide your discussions, we partner with you to supercharge your culture when you get back to everyday work.