[ad_1]
Business travel means sending employees away from their home office – to meet with clients or colleagues in other offices. But for many remote-first companies, it now means the opposite: bringing employees together from their remote homes to work face-to-face.
These so-called “off-sites” – the time since these companies were actual locations – have the potential to change the face of business travel.
While consumer travel recovered in 2022, business travel was slow to recover.. A company’s off-site may account for a larger share of the budget than in previous years.
Doist, a software company with employees spread across the globe, wanted something different for its company-wide retreat in July.
“We rented a small village in the Austrian Alps,” says Chase Warrington, Doist’s head of remote control. “We had a lederhosen party and went to traditional lodges for dinner.”
Warrington says the purpose of these off-site meetings is different from the purposes of a traditional business trip. Rather than cramming into meetings to get work done, these retreats aim for connection and relaxation. That means throwing out the traditional business travel playbook.
Business or pleasure… or something else?
Rather than replacing traditional business travel, off-site retreats are seen by many as a new trend in their own right.
“Business travel is still there, it just looks different,” said Bruno Muchada, head of expansion at Surf Office Property Partners, a corporate retreat management company. “You travel to see your company as much as you want to see customers.”
And as the line between business and entertainment blurs toward “crash” travel, off-site organizers recognize the relative importance of traditional meetings and programs. In this inverted situation, employees are now working at home and playing with their colleagues in the opposite “office”.
“I have this theory about dividing the structure of the day,” says Warrington, who also manages off-site events for Doist. “It should be 20% work, 30% activities and 50% free time.”
This free time allows for spontaneous connections and conversations that back-office apologists appreciate. And it fundamentally changes how — and where — these off-sites are organized.
“Don’t take us to a big hotel downtown and give us a big itinerary,” says Warrington, channeling the staff’s sentiments.
This can be problematic for hotels that depend on traditional conference centers and the constant drumbeat of business travel. However, it has created a new small business ecosystem designed to help remote businesses manage declining employee morale.
Enter the off-site startup
Investment has poured into the growing off-site industry. Software company Salesforce has built a self-contained wellness retreat in the Redwoods of California where it hosts team-building events. and Work Village, a custom-designed site for company retreats in Italy, launched in 2021.
Yet remote companies are finding that while cross-company meetings with hundreds of employees can help boost morale, they’re a pain to organize.
“Many companies are promoting travel manager positions,” says Muchada. But you realize that organizing everything is a lot of work; That is why many companies contact us.
Surf Office manages retreats around the world, from Santa Cruz, California to Tuscany, Italy, and aims to ease the guesswork (and paperwork) of travel managers and HR teams. Similar businesses have sprung up to address this sudden surge in demand.
“When the vaccines started to spread, I started to know that the world is changing,” says Hunter Block, founder of Offsiter, which offers market retreats like Airbnb. “People never go back to the office.”
Block quickly realized that organizations needed more than a location—they needed an organizer. So Offsiter now offers full service for company swag, everything from collecting t-shirt sizes to handling.
“We can handle it all, right down to holding the clipboard and telling people where to go,” Block says. “Then the whole team is involved in it instead of being divided by the nitty-gritty. We’re very much like a wedding planner.”
Despite its sudden rise, the offsite industry remains in its infancy and has many kinks to work out.
“I’ve tried some tools that are meant to serve this market, but they’re very crude,” says Warrington. “They’re flying the plane and building it.”
__________________________________
This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Sam Kemmis is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: skemmis@nerdwallet.com
Related link:
NerdWallet: How long until business travel returns to normal? https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-until-business-travel-is-back-to-normal
[ad_2]
Source link
