With our annual retreat set to take place the following month in tropical Bali, it became quite clear we’d have to postpone and eventually cancel. 

Similar stories have come out from many distributed international teams like HelpScout, AgoraPulse, Poll everywhere and Microverse. 

“At the end of March and beginning of April was going to be our first official team retreat in Lisbon,” says Head of Marketing at Microverse, Meesen Brown.

“Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

And, while of course cancelled travel plans aren’t the worst outcome of this pandemic it definitely changed the course of how 2020 looked for remote teams. Instead of having some in-person fun with our normally distributed teams, meeting new team members for the first time and working through some meaningful discussions, we’ve grappled with how to bring our retreat events online. 

A virtual retreat is definitely a different experience. It takes a different sort of planning and commitment, it requires different activities to ensure everyone feels connected, and there are undoubtedly different barriers to overcome, like time zones and Zoom fatigue. But we’ve found that it’s not impossible. 

In this article, we hear from both the Head of Marketing at Microverse, Meesen Brown and Shield’s own Head of HR Stella Huang on what they’ve learned from planning virtual retreats and how you can integrate them into your team schedule. 

Figure out your why for the retreat

When deciding whether to take your retreat online or just wait out the year, it’s important to figure out what you were hoping to gain from the experience. 

If your priorities were heavily contingent on the specific location you were hoping to visit, there’s not too much you can do. But if it was more about deepening relationships, celebrating successes and working through company changes or initiatives, there is still plenty you can do in an online space. 

“No matter what, we wanted to prioritise getting together and connecting,” Meesen says. “Whether that happened in person or not, we just wanted that to happen.”

By figuring out your main priority, it will help you figure out an action plan...read more

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