Team offsites are coming back. Let’s get them right this time.

Remote working has transformed the world of work. It has brought flexibility to individuals, reduced environmental impact on the planet and even boosted performance for organisations. But the need to connect in person remains. Even as someone who loves remote working and whose life balance was actually saved by the pandemic, I have loved seeing my team mates and clients ‘in the flesh’.

So, the offsite is back. But the ones I’ve seen have snapped back into their old ways: let’s sit in a room and take in turns to present to each other.
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Here are some tips to do them right:

1. Get talking: use your time together for discussions, not presentations.
2. Get information out before: use recorded videos to share the topics you want to discuss. Try Marco Polo.
3. Get outdoors: proven to have a positive impact on us, your offsite gives you a unique opportunity to be in nature together. Try BusinessOutside.
4. Get close: use some exercises to deepen connections and share emotion. That has been shown to lead to happiness and that delivers performance. https://thehappinessindex.com/.
5. Get teaming: so many offsites are about ‘what’ the team does. Many teams are taking time to explore the ‘how’. Of course, to give you the data you need, try Squadify.
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Basically, don’t do anything that you have done on an offsite before!

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