When you spend the money to arrange a venue hire for an offsite meeting, there’s no doubt that you want the outcome to be full of positive results. Although there are many options that can help your offsite meeting be a success, there are also many missteps that can cause your meeting to be a flop rather than a hit. Here are some ways to make offsite meetings the best experience for you and your employees.
- Do Choose a Venue That Will Facilitate Your Team Well
When investing in a venue hire for your offsite meeting, you’ll want the space to serve your needs and those of your team. For example, if you are planning a host of team-building activities, you may want to opt for an open concept meeting space. Or if you’re planning a presentation, you’ll want to make sure the venue has the technology you need.
- Do Have the Team Preview the Data in Advance
It’s understandable if you have data and content that you need to go over during the offsite meeting. But you might spend a majority of the meeting time trying to digest information rather than creating solutions. Instead, you could make better use of your offsite meeting time if you choose to have employees preview the data in advance of the meeting. All you have to do is send out the data and content you want employees to review a few days ahead of the meeting and request that they all review it in advance.
- Do Establish a Core Issue
If you’re planning to hold an offsite meeting that lasts one workday, be aware that time will be fleeting. You’ll need to make sure the agenda has a clear focus so that everyone walks away having accomplished the goal at hand. Think about one issue that you want to tackle. Or if you’re going to split your employees into their workgroups, think about one core issue each workgroup has that needs to be solved. By doing this, you’ll ensure that everyone knows what they need to achieve by the day’s end.
- Do Open the Meeting By Asking Everyone to Think About Their Purpose
By holding an offsite meeting, you may be able to inspire your employees and jumpstart their creativity. To get things started off on the right foot, ask everyone to take a few moments at the beginning of the meeting and write down what they believe their purpose is at work. Also ask them to write down their work-related goals and the company’s goals and see how well they align. Starting the meeting off this way can help give everyone the right perspective to have a productive day.
- Do Invite Outside Speakers
If your team is a small department in a big company, think about inviting managers and leaders from other departments to speak about their successful operational processes and other successes they’ve had. This can help give your team a different perspective and possibly inspire them to try something different to solve a problem they may be struggling with.
- Do Leave Plenty of Time in the Schedule
Don’t try to pack too much into the agenda because the results will be either everyone will feel rushed — or you won’t be able to get to everything that you have planned. No matter what you estimate you can accomplish during the offsite meeting, chances are you won’t be able to accomplish everything. The best way to make sure you have plenty of time in the schedule is to pad each activity with extra time. That way, if you finish early, you can take a short break or you can move on to the next activity.
- Do Plan Fun Activities That Employees Will Enjoy
You may or may not want to plan team-building activities as part of your offsite meeting. If you do opt for these type of activities, make sure that they are fun and your employees will enjoy them. If you’re unsure if the activities you’re planning meet those criteria, put yourself in your employees’ shoes and think about whether you would enjoy the proposed activities. If the answer is no, try harder to find activities they will enjoy.
- Do Plan to Follow Up
Don’t let the things that your team discusses and works on during the offsite meeting fade away once you leave the venue. Have each team take notes and send you a summary of their plans. Then follow up periodically with each team to ask about their progress.