How to Successfully Build Culture in a Remote Workplace with Offsites and Summits (in 4 Easy Steps)
A Managing Director shares 4 steps for running successful in-person summits for a fully remote company.
I vividly remember a conversation with my boss in mid-March 2020 as our employees packed up their desks for a seemingly indefinite amount of time.
“How will we collaborate?”
“How will we grow?”
“How will we know people are working?”
Even though I had worked semi-remote jobs before, the transition from in-person to remote work was scary at first. The routine of commuting, socializing by the coffee machine, and meetings in our cozy conference room felt comfortable.
Looking back, I have to laugh. I absolutely love working from home and have watched my sanity, health, and relationships flourish without a daily commute. Our workplace culture has remained pretty much the same even though we no longer have daily walks to Starbucks or weekly Friday lunches. And our productivity hasn’t suffered at all.
While remote work has many upsides, the detriment of not seeing each other in person is real. Employees are close, but not as close as they may have been before. Collaboration is high, but there are still moments of panic when an employee can’t be reached. Managers are surviving, but not thriving without the benefit of picking up non-verbal cues in person. And I’ll just be honest — onboarding is ROUGH.
Seeing as 1/3 of our company is no longer in Los Angeles, we had to think of something to bridge the gap between a fully remote workplace and moments of in-person collaboration.
So what did we do instead? We started planning and hosting twice-yearly summits (aka offsites).
Twice a year, we fly employees to a central location and plan 2–3 days of programming. It’s a mixture of fun, culture-building time, and serious work. My colleague Ryan has done a great job of summarizing what our summits look like here and here.
Since you don’t work at Use All Five, though, I thought I’d share the 4 steps we took in order to plan each of these summits. The energy and excitement we all feel after each event is a testament to how successful they’ve been. I highly encourage you to bring something similar to your workplace.
Without further adieu, here’s a 4 step plan for creating a successful offsite or summit for your workplace:
- Find a location central enough and within budget
- Plan far enough out so you can get everyone to attend
- Program a good mix of culture-building vs. company-focused vs. pure fun
- Learn and iterate
Find a location central enough and within budget
While some companies can afford to send everyone to Italy, that’s not the reality for most. So you’ll want to find a location that makes sense for you as a company.
There are several things you need to weigh when picking the location:
- Be realistic with yourself in terms of company performance and forecast — what can you truly afford?
- How much travel time are you asking of your employees? There’s the opportunity cost of the time they could’ve been working billable hours, but also a human factor of how taxing travel can be. This becomes especially important when you have many employees who are parents.
- Are you confident your employees feel they are compensated fairly? I can personally attest to how bad it feels to make an extremely low salary and be “paid in parties.”
- What cities can house your employees adequately? We had to move a summit once from Philly to New York as that weekend was UPenn graduation and all of the hotels were either booked or exorbitant.
It’s really tough to plan travel for a group when taking everyone’s input, but by keeping the above 4 points in mind you will be starting your summit off on the right foot.
Plan far enough out so you can get everyone to attend
At work, there are few things worse than broken promises.
So if you’re going to plan an offsite, make sure everyone can attend.
Sure, things come up. Not usually, though, if you plan far enough in advance.
We’ve learned this the hard way so take it from me — gauge people’s availability far enough in advance (6 months +).
Program a good mix of culture-building vs. company-focused vs. pure fun
Most, if not all of your company is comprised of adults who already sat through years of lectures in school. Nobody needs or wants that at this stage in their life.
On the other hand, you need to make the summit meaningful to your work somehow. Otherwise, what’s the point in spending all that time, money, and effort?
You have to decide what’s right for your organization, but we like to aim for a pretty much even split between culture-building, company or work-focused activities, and things just for fun.
A few ideas for each:
Culture-building
- Values or Mission definition exercise
- Ice breakers (try a company-specific Jeopardy!)
- Scavenger hunts
Company-focused
- Hackathons
- Project-specific breakout groups
- Museum visits
Fun
- Happy hours
- Physical activities (hiking, biking)
- Breaking bread (dinners, picnics, cooking classes)
Learn and iterate
If you’re not learning, you’re not growing, right? No matter how successful your offsite was, there’s always room to grow.
We like to send surveys out at the end of or after our summits to make sure everyone had as good of a time as Management thought they did. We also task Managers with asking employees about their experience during their 1:1s.
It’s impossible to please everyone, but since summits and offsites are for the employees — it behooves you to ensure they appreciate it.
I hope this article sparked some ideas on how to program an in-person experience that will work for your team. I am a firm believer in the future of remote work (or at least hybrid) while finding moments to still collaborate and meet in person.
Let’s use summits and offsites to make this dream of mine a reality!