Producing a Successful Offsite Part 6/6: The “In Between” Spaces Are Just as Important!
Over course of the past five blog posts, we’ve talked about the importance of clearly defining your offsite ROI, to generate maximum employee engagement and satisfaction.
We’ve discussed the value of having a theme and applying total immersion to maximize your impact on the event’s participants, as well as your executive training.
We’ve also discussed how a pre-offsite teaser campaign and a post offsite follow-up program can expand your impact on the participant well beyond the short 3-5 days during which the offsite takes place.
This 6th and final post brings the entire series together, via a structured offsite agenda. This is a very important component, primarily because of how damaging it can be, should it not be done right.
At Vayomar, we have seen so many poorly built agendas drain the value from the previous components.
All too often, agendas get crammed in an attempt to “make the most of the time.”
It’s almost as if the value of the offsite is directly proportional to the number of presentations on the agenda. As a result, offsite agendas are often built from back to back presentations from 8am to 6pm, leaving the participants in a torturous and passive state for hours on end. That being said, the goal of any offsite should be about ensuring as many messages as possible are ABSORBED by participants in the most meaningful way. When it comes to building your offsite’s agenda, value mapping is key; it’s all about quality, not quantity. That’s why we must make sure that our agenda is designed to take full advantage of the unique “impact opportunities” that are inherent to offsites, including during downtime and casual encounters.
Far too often, 10%-20% of the people invited to attend an offsite bounce mid-event, wasting costly event resources. Ensuring that offsite participants have ample time to spend with each other in an informal way helps make sure that a good time is had by all, so that even after the offsite ends, positive memories remain, and participants are compelled to attend future offsites.
As such, the offsite agenda should provide:
- Professional content.
- Fun content.
- “Free time” – casual interactions between the participants
Together, these three elements can really help make sure that our participants are: in the best possible state of mind; highly motivated to engage throughout the offsite; and more likely to attend future ones (or recommend that others attend).
Series Summary
We hope these 6 posts and their content will help you plan a highly enjoyable and productive offsite, while positioning you for the next event. There are few experiences, within large enterprises, as satisfying as seeing the deep and meaningful impact a truly successful offsite has on its participants, along with the deep sense of satisfaction of those manager(s) who funded the event. This impact stays with them for years – sometimes even throughout their entire careers; an amazing ROI in its own right.
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