Offsite Team Building

Do you want your offsites to be successful at team-building while also ensuring productivity? If so, you should consider the following 5 ideas:

1. If you are having an offsite meeting for ‘Team Building’, do yourself a favor and declare how your meeting actually improves business. It’s important to have real business goals for the meeting. Actual business development such as sales goals for the next year, new customer service ideas or trying to fix a nagging problem are some ideas to concentrate on.

2. Make sure there’s enough time to network. There should be plenty of time throughout the

experience for everyone to get to know each other and enjoy refreshments. Everyone needs to know each other better in order to have a more cohesive and better working team. Do not plan getting to know each other activities – let the team do this naturally.

3. Try your best not to hold the offsite during a particularly busy time, as you want your team members’ full attention. You don’t want them to be constantly checking emails or leaving to make phone calls. Attempt to hold your offsite during a slow period. As is the case with most businesses, there may not be a prime “slow” time during which to hold the offsite, but you want to make sure team members are not already taking on more work than they can handle.

4. Some of the best offsites are overnight events. It gives a more fun-filled atmosphere with the team having dinner together, drinks, music etc making the whole thing feel so much more relaxed.

At such offsites team always end up staying late and brainstorming new out-of-the-box strategies and working through business problems. These sessions prove to be invaluable because the team members put their heads together to address problems and opportunities. Everyone works together as a team and, more importantly, the team members build real relationships with each by getting to know each other better. They get to know how the others think and act, which lays the foundation for building a strong team.

5. Following a business meeting where an idea was born, it is crucial to develop a plan of action. If you are going to complete a project elsewhere it is imperative that you have a well thought-out plan of action. Without a plan, you will just have a list of ideas or thoughts and no way to complete the project. You need to do this as soon as possible after the original meeting and keep your team members informed of your process. Otherwise, the team will lose faith in the project and feel that their time could have been put to better use.

Good Luck and Happy Team Building !