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Conducting Retreats: a Business Approach

A successful retreat must not only be educational, but also entertaining and well-planned. The most effective kind of retreat is one that combines work and leisure instead of focusing on just one of the two aspects (Malvicini & Serrat, 2017). It is difficult to evaluate how effective a team-building exercise or strategy is, as the result is rather subjective and the same strategy may work differently with different people. However, overall team-building activities have a positive effect on workplace cohesion, communication, and workplace satisfaction (Merguei, 2022). Team retreats in particular, are a good way to increase performance by simply allowing the employees to get to know their coworkers face-to-face. According to Harvard Business Review, 35% of the variation in a teams performance can be accounted for simply by the number of face-to-face exchanges among team members (Pentland et al, 2015). Such retreats also place a group of people in an entirely new environment and allow them to interact outside their usual, establish boundaries. It also removes daily stressors that may interfere with effective communication or performance, allowing employees to focus on their tasks more effectively for the duration of the retreat.

Retreats, especially ones that last several days, are an expensive affair. Though few studies made a point to track cost-effectiveness of team retreats, those that did show that retreats were more cost-effective than other activities. (Kornhaber et al., 2016). To properly evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a retreat, one must determine the clear goals that they aim to accomplish. Whether it is to give the employees an environment for working smarter, not harder, or to foster teamwork, the desired outcome will determine the basis for determining the cost-effectiveness. Over a three-month period following the retreat, the employees that participated will be observed to evaluate their performance, job satisfaction, and quality of work. This may be done both directly (through interview) or indirectly (through observation or evaluation of their output numbers). As retreats are expensive, it is difficult to conduct them with large numbers of employees at the same time. Larger groups also limit the timing and length of the retreat due to scheduling conflicts and personal obligations. For these reasons, groups of 6 to 10 individuals are recommended for a more effective retreat (Zhang et al., 2018). Larger groups are possible, but may lead to decreased result and cost-effectiveness.

References

Malvicini, P., Serrat, O. (2017). Conducting Successful Retreats. In: Knowledge Solutions. Springer, Singapore. Web.

Merguei, N. (2022). Venturing out: Designing effective pre-acceleration programs. Technovation, 116, 102500. Web.

Kornhaber, R., Cross, M., Betihavas, V., & Bridgman, H., (2016). The benefits and challenges of academic writing retreats: an integrative review. Higher Education Research & Development, (), 118.

Pentland, A. S., & Woolley A., & Malone T. W. (2015). The new science of Building Great Teams. Harvard Business Review. Web.

Zhang, X. C., Lee, H., Rodriguez, C., Rudner, J., Chan, T. M., & Papanagnou, D. (2018). Trapped as a group, escape as a team: Applying gamification to incorporate team-building skills through an Escape Room experience. Cureus. Web.

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