Your First Company Retreat: A Checklist From Idea to Follow-Up

Organising a first company retreat is not a hard task, but it has many small parts. What almost everyone underestimates is not the effort – it is the sequence. Plan the programme before the date is fixed and you will do the work twice.

So this checklist counts backwards from arrival day. It comes from experience with over 500 groups hosted in our own houses since 2007.

First: the one question

Before anything gets booked, you need a sentence starting with "Afterwards we will have decided…" or "Afterwards the team will know…". If that sentence does not come together, you are planning a trip, not a retreat. This is not bureaucracy – length, format, group size and budget all follow from that one answer.

Four to six months out

• Fix the date and block it in every calendar. If necessary before the programme exists – the date is the bottleneck, not the agenda.
• Get the budget approved. As a total, not per person: leaders decide on totals.
• Enquire with venues. In high season the good ones are gone six months ahead.
• Decide the format. Two days of offsite and four days of retreat are two different projects – our comparison of the formats helps.

Three months out

• Book the house, pay the deposit.
• Set the rough programme: how many working blocks, how much open time. Rule of thumb: four to five hours of structured programme per day, maximum.
• Sort out travel – together or individually, rail or car, transfer from the station.
• Decide whether you want external facilitation. Whoever facilitates cannot argue their own case at the same time.

Six weeks out

• Collect allergies, intolerances and dietary preferences. Not later – kitchens need lead time.
• Sort out room allocation. It takes longer than expected and is a sensitive topic among adult colleagues.
• Book activities – including a bad-weather alternative. It can snow in the mountains in July.
• Send the invitation: programme, travel, packing list, what to bring.

Two weeks out

• Send the final participant list to the venue.
• Share the agenda with times. People plan their sleep and their calls around it.
• Confirm the tech: projector, whiteboard, flipchart, sockets, WiFi password.
• Name an owner for every programme item. "We'll do team building then" with no name attached does not happen.

Two days out

• Pack materials: markers, sticky notes, name tags, chargers, extension leads.
• Send emergency contacts and the address to everyone – including those travelling separately.
• Check the weather, activate or drop plan B.

During the retreat

Two things that make the difference and cost nothing:

• Someone takes notes. Not the person facilitating. Decisions nobody writes down stop existing after two weeks.
• Defend the gaps. The afternoon with no programme looks like wasted time and is the part where the thing you came for happens. When someone suggests "quickly filling it", say no.

The week after

This is where it is decided whether the retreat had an effect:

• Within seven days, send a document: what was decided, who does what by when. Two pages is enough.
• Collect short feedback. Three questions do it – what was good, what was missing, what should change next time.
• Set the date for the next one while the mood is still good.

Two numbers for orientation

For budgeting: accommodation with breakfast starts at around CHF 180 per person per night; with full board, meeting room and one activity the most booked rate is about CHF 280. Do not forget working time – on most retreats it is the single largest item. A full cost breakdown is in What does a retreat deliver, and the calculator for your case is under pricing.

The long version of this checklist – including the twenty questions to ask every venue – is available as a free download.