What is a Team Offsite? ✅
A team offsite is a meeting with the team away from the usual workplace, often lasting several days and usually combining work and team-building activities.
The aim of a team offsite is to bring colleagues together in a creative environment to work on special projects, strategic planning, team building activities or creative brainstorming sessions.
Typically, an offsite lasts from one to several days and is often combined with informal activities to encourage team dynamics.
What does offsite mean?
The word is made up of off and site. Site refers to the usual working environment, e.g. the home office or the office, and off means that you are consciously immersed in a different environment.
What does off-site meeting mean?
Off-site meeting means that you do not work independently of each other as in a workation, but come together as a team, meet and work on a challenge together. In most cases, an off-site meeting brings together a team that otherwise only works together remotely.
Why are there off-site meetings?
But why should you have to travel to the countryside, another city or even another country for a meeting?
The question is justified, but the answer is obvious in the next thought. What should be the aim of the offsite meeting? To bring the same ideas to the table as always?
Be honest: when was the last time you experienced a meeting in the office that generated a flood of new ideas and a wave of inspiration in the team?
A little while ago? Then imagine the following.
You get on the train in the morning. You have a seat right by the window with a table and look at your plan for the next two days. A team offsite in the mountains, the boss has said…
A few hours later, you arrive at the train station in Braunlage in the Harz Mountains. The weather is fine and it’s 23 degrees and sunny when you get off the train. The rest of the familiar team is already at the station and is waiting for you with a cool drink.
Together we continue to a hotel in Braunlage, which welcomes you with the highest meeting room in Lower Saxony and a great boutique charm.
As it is now 12:00 noon, a delicious lunch buffet is brought to you: the perfect time to get together with the team in a relaxed atmosphere. You’ll learn about the campfire cooking school that awaits you in the evening.
After lunch, the first focused work session begins and instead of a boring presentation – prepared in 5 minutes by the boss – there is a well-thought-out and structured agenda.
The aim of your session is to launch your new product. Normally, this is done in the sterile white conference room at the company, which the boss has specially equipped for the occasion with free gummy bears and a great choice of sparkling or still water. What a great boss he is…
This time, however, you not only have a drinks flat rate at your disposal, but also snacks that taste good for once, coffee provided by the local roastery and a meeting room where the projector works right after you switch it on for the first time and doesn’t blow dust out of the ventilation slots.
Now put yourself in this situation and think about the direction in which ideas for this product launch will flow. Will it be the same ideas as always, or could something new and exciting emerge this time?
That’s what a team offsite is all about – that’s exactly what a team offsite is. New places, new ideas and an experience that stays in your head in a combination of work and experiences.
What is decisive for Team Offsites?
The right location makes a big difference to a team offsite. That’s why more and more teams are opting for a team offsite, where they simply leave their familiar surroundings and travel to a completely new and inspiring location for a day or two. And it is precisely these team offsite locations that we have tracked down, visited and tested in recent years and have now made available to you. Take a look right here for a team offsite location that suits your next event and get some valuable inspiration.
However, to ensure that the team offsite does not become a cost guzzler, but really achieves the desired results in the team, take a look at our article: Planning and organizing team offsites correctly.
