How to hack your company retreat
The 6AM City team met up in person for the first time since 2019. Here’s how we made the most of our time together — and how your company can, too.
You might not have known this, but we’re part of a team of 110 people across 24 cities (and you’re one of a million subscribers). The last time our team saw each other in person, it was 2019, and we had 34 employees. That means that most of us have never met in person. It was time to have a retreat — and we just finished ours, in Nashville, TN.
If your company is anything like ours, you’re feeling ready to do some team-building and bonding after a challenging couple of years — and you know that company culture, hiring, and retention are more important than ever. So we’re here to help. As your team prepares to get back together in the post-COVID world, you can use this guide to hack your company retreat. While it’s based on our experiences in Nashville, you’ll be able to take this itinerary and make it fit any city you choose. Keep reading for all of the pro tips, and get ready to plan an unforgettable experience that will inspire + activate your team.
Pick the perfect city.
We love celebrating our local communities, and we think all of our markets are pretty great. We knew we wanted to plan our retreat in one of those cities, so here’s how we narrowed it down:
- Proximity of team members. While we have staff on both coasts, the majority of us live on the East Coast or in the Midwest. Choosing a city in this region meant that we saved on airfare, and most of our team had shorter trips.
- Climate and time of year. We knew we wanted to spend most of our time exploring the city, not just sitting in conference rooms. So we needed a spot that would be warm enough for our team in early spring (sorry, Boston). Nashville’s weather was on the cool side, but it gave our staff the chance to show off their layering skills. We also looked at event calendars to choose the time of the month we’d be showing up — making sure we avoided big events that would bring a lot of other people to town.
- Things to do. We wanted our staff to have fun exploring everything the city we chose had to offer. Nashville topped our list because of its history, culture, music, food, art — and more.
- Walkability. Shuttling 100+ people around a city is a stressor that a retreat planning group doesn’t need to take on. We made sure to book a hotel (the 21c Museum Hotel, which has the added bonus of being an art gallery) in an area of town where we’d be able to walk to everything.
- Partnerships. We work with the CM Group, a company founded in Nashville, to distribute our newsletter (check out their game-changing product, Sailthru), and we were able to coordinate a happy hour at Acme Feed & Seed with them — a chance to get even more people in on the fun.
Craft the ultimate itinerary.
Once you have your city, the fun begins. The focus of our retreat was team-building (versus training). We built our schedule out with that mission firmly in place — here’s how.
- Get feedback from your team. What do they want to do? Asking them for their input on the front end will not only make planning easier, it will also help them feel excitement about and ownership over the plans. Your team might also have connections at some of the places you want to visit — helpful for securing tickets or getting behind-the-scenes experiences.
- Ask experts in the city. We worked closely with Visit Music City and our hotel, which shared their recommendations for things to do that would work for a large group.
- A speaker sets the tone. At our morning kickoff, we heard from Nashville poet and inspirational speaker Rashad Rayford (“tha Poet”), who got our team feeling motivated, creative, and excited for the rest of our time together. Pro Tip: Check out TedX and Creative Mornings chapters, which share all of their presenters online, to find amazing local speakers.
- Get out and about. We were so excited to explore Nashville, but we wanted to plan things out in advance as much as possible to maximize time for fun — and take the burden off of our staff. We provided structured experiences for our team, including small group breakout itineraries based on their interests (they visited spots like the National Museum of African American Music, Frist Art Museum, the Nashville Farmers Market, Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, and Hatch Show Print).
- Be intentional about groups. We knew that if people didn’t really know each other by the end of our time together, we had failed in our mission. We crafted breakout groups thoughtfully, ensuring that people would be with different team members during their time in Nashville, whether they were creating art together or getting points during our team scavenger hunt. We built that with the Goosechase app, by the way, which has an intuitive user interface and is fully customizable. We also challenged them to ask each other deep questions — and yes, there will be a pop quiz at a later date.
- Plan some downtime. Retreat itineraries can be exhausting, especially when team members are adjusting to different time zones or recovering from early morning flights. We included several hours on each day when our team could fill time as they wished and offered guides to help them decide where to eat and go if they wanted to explore on their own. We also planned a casual dinner on our final night at Assembly Food Hall, where our staff had tons of options.
Don’t forget the follow-up.
Even when you’ve planned the ultimate itinerary, there’s one last step you should take before your team heads out, and that’s to make sure you keep creating opportunities for connection after the retreat ends. We asked team members to share a virtual cup of coffee or tea with one another once they were home — with the mug and drink on us — as a way to continue strengthening relationships even after we were all back at home.
Want to come to our next retreat? You’re in luck, because we’re hiring. Check out our open positions here.
What tips do you have for building a great company retreat? Leave a comment, and let us know.
