Let’s be honest: Corporate events, including retreats, have never had a reputation for being entertaining or inspiring creativity. But your collaborative corporate retreat activities, while clearly work-related, don’t have to be agonizing slogs. And your employees don’t have to perceive you as an organic version of one of those AI chat interfaces or phone answering machines that exist for the sole purpose of inducing feelings of alienation and rage while preventing someone from having access to anyone who might care about them or have the decision-making authority to make resolve their problem.
Collaborative corporate retreat activities, like the whole retreat itself, are about cultivating a sense of shared purpose and a feeling that you’re all working toward the same goal. And just as importantly, they’re about reminding employees that the other people around them aren’t just predatory vipers or soulless machines that will either consume or discard them the moment it becomes possible to make an extra 15 cents or secure a promotion by doing so. In other words, collaborative corporate retreat activities are about reminding everyone of their humanity and reinforcing it as a company value. We know that still sounds like CorporateSpeak™, but it will hopefully start sounding more real and sentimental as we continue through this article.
1. Take Everyone Hiking… But In Teams
Most of us modern humans, especially in the corporate world, spend the majority of our lives inside air-conditioned rooms, staring at digital screens with minimal sunlight and no frequent or consistent interaction with the natural environment that would have been familiar to our ancestors or even our great-grandparents. Think about it: When was the last time you saw a bird closely enough to tell what kind it was, or lost your phone signal without immediately thinking it was a problem, or that you were being unjustly deprived of something essential to civilized life? Your employees are experiencing that too, in most cases.
So, why not treat everyone to a stimulating but relaxing hike through nature? If you’re all on a retreat already, chances are you’ve got some nature around you (especially if you’re somewhere like where we are). Make use of it! As far as collaborative corporate retreat activities go, there are few better options than those that involve not only getting back to basics and interacting with the natural world, but also necessitate that participants look out for each other and work together to reach a common goal (like getting to the end of a trail or finding a particular creek). Re-engage by disengaging from modernity for a while and getting back in touch with the natural environment our species evolved to exist within for hundreds of thousands of years before we started wearing suits and having complex daily skincare routines.
Hiking is great physical exercise for a group of people who (let’s be honest) probably all spend an unhealthy amount of time sitting or otherwise fixed in sedentary positions for long periods of time every day. Even more than that, hiking in teams requires team members to rely on each other for certain things and delegate responsibilities and duties among themselves. You know, like in a workspace. The brilliance of it is that it’s an activity that automatically fosters many of the same teamwork and team-building behaviors that are always talked about or advertised as company values in a way that doesn’t feel like an overbearing and painfully boring corporate seminar or training session.
2. Start a Movement
In keeping with the nature theme we’ve already established, another terrific category of collaborative corporate retreat activities is those related or dedicated to conserving the environment. But that’s not specific enough to actually organize anything around. Instead of going so broad, narrow down specifically which part of the environment or what thing in the environment is the focus of the activity. This not only opens up a number of opportunities that might not have been immediately obvious initially, but also invites you and your participants to take notice of certain things that were always there but may have just seemed like indistinguishable parts of the background to you before.
For example, no matter where you are, there are probably at least one or two interesting animal species living in a habitat near you. And they don’t need to be critically endangered to be interesting. Think of all the birds, rodents, fish, and even pretty bugs like butterflies you can probably find within 10 or 20 miles of wherever you are. Think of all the cardinals, crows, rabbits, squirrels, turtles, frogs, salamanders, trout, bass, and so on that are all endemic to your area. There is definitely something you could do to encourage one of those species to thrive, whether that’s by installing birdhouses and birdfeeders in a particular area, building a water feature to attract frogs, or cleaning trash out of a river.
Just imagine how much better you and your employees (or coworkers) will feel after getting some fresh air, stretching your legs, and working together to do something you know will make the local area more lively and beautiful. You can even schedule future retreats at the same place to see how much positive impact your collaborative corporate retreat activities are having year after year. How much more motivated will you and your employees feel to do those small good things every day when you can all see the visible increase in life and biosphere health occurring as a result of your actions? Anyone can donate some money, but it feels different to get physically involved and make a personal connection with the natural world as a group.
Whatever project you decide to start, invite other companies, departments within your company, or even local organizations to get involved, too, so that it becomes a local community movement instead of just a one-off. How much positive impact can one frog pond make over 10 years? How about 5 of them? How about birdhouses? How about planting and cultivating gardens in the area to attract butterflies and other pollinators?
Get Out There!
These are only two of the nature-inspired collaborative corporate retreat activities we could have written about. We tried to keep this article short to inspire you without taking too much of your time, but we still tried to dive into what we did cover. We hope you’ve got some fun ideas swirling around in your head now, and we hope you act on one of them! At the end of the day, we all go to work to make money and survive, but that doesn’t mean we have to be miserable while doing so, and it doesn’t mean we only have to completely forget where we came from or why we want to survive in this world to begin with.
