Getting Together

With most people working remotely in our company it is important to sometimes get together, face to face. It is easy to just deal with people virtually but to make a real connection sometimes it requires meeting in real life.

In recent years we have achieved this by having company offsites. We bring everyone together in a single location, usually London where there is a majority of people, and give everyone the chance to actually meet each other.

The main aim of the offsites is to promote interaction; for people to be able to spend time with each other and potentially interact with people they would not normally do so in their day to day work. It is particularly beneficial for those who have joined since the last offsite as, in a lot of cases, it will be their first chance to meet everyone.

Despite this being the main purpose we have found that is also important that there is a focus and a reason for getting together.

The first morning mainly consists of things involving the whole company. This includes presentations by most departments and key management as well as important company updates. The CEO will usually set the scene for the next three to six months and emphasise what the focus should be.

The afternoon involves an exercise requiring splitting into groups - ensuring there is as much mixing of departments as possible. This has included pre-mortems (identifying what could kill the company and how to prevent it) and identifying marginal gains (the 1% improvements we can make that will add up).

In the evening is a social event, usually starting with some team activity. This has included crazy golf, shuttle-board and the last time was an opportunity for our foreign team members to experience the thrill of playing cricket. It is finished off with a company wide evening meal - everyone is encouraged to attend, even it means additional people needing to stay overnight.

The second day is mostly focused on each of the teams. The “technologists” usually spend most of the day in a workshop planning and designing the next major piece of work whilst the business side discuss and plan the next steps for their side of things - sales strategies, marketing, etc.

Clearly with a lot of people living in other locations the company sorts out flights, travel and accommodation (or at a minimum pays for it). This can include accommodation for those living in the same area but far enough away that travel to and fro each day would impact their ability to attend all of it.

One other key aspect is to allow time either before or after the event for those who live in other countries to be able to explore the location. It would be a shame if this was their one chance to visit a location and all they saw was the inside of the place the event was taking place. It may cost an extra night of accommodation but the benefit to the staff member significantly outweighs that.

The feedback we have had from these events has been very positive and we actually plan to add an additional offsite each year.