It’s time for your company Away Day.
You’ve made the decision to plan a company Away Day because the time is right. You have a couple of objectives and you need to get your team together. Before we get into how to come up with those innovative away day ideas, let’s talk about how people feel about the day.
We all know that the idea of a company Away Day doesn’t necessarily fill everyone with excitement and enthusiasm. For some people, an Away Day is a welcome chance to step away from the day to day and to re-connect with people, make new connections, plot and plan, and do something different.
For others that same day will feel like a wrench away from the work that needs doing. There may be the feeling of gloom associated with having to talk and interact with people.
The dread that they will have to endure “prescribed fun”.
Of course, you can never please everyone (and nor should this be your aim). An Away Day will inevitably push some people outside their comfort zone. At the same time, you also don’t want to set the scene for a catastrophe. Defensiveness and rejection are not conducive to a productive Away Day and means that it takes twice as much effort to get the day going.
So how can you make your company Away Day a success and something that is innovative and fulfilling? How do you turn it into a chance to connect rather than something to reject in the first place?
It all starts with the planning: involve the right people at the start.
While too many cooks can easily spoil any broth, getting input from different sources will help with both inspiration and buy-in. To avoid ‘input overwhelm’, ask team leads to canvas their own teams. They could send out staff surveys or simply create a digital space such as a Trello board to invite people to share their innovative ideas.
Another key part of a good company Away Day involves deciding what you want your day to look like. This requires that you link carefully to the objectives and ensure there is a point to your Away Day. Yes, you wouldn’t believe how many Away Days are planned without any thought to the actual point of the day.
It is also useful to check back on what has been done for previous Away Days. This will help spark new creative ideas and also to check that you don’t have too much duplication. After all, coming up with innovative ideas for a company Away Day in the first place can feel a bit tricky – but you don’t need to reinvent the wheel: what have you done before, and who was there? It can be easier to tweak something that worked before to make it new for the team.
Once you have done that, it’s time to think creatively about your Away Day and how it should go.
Here are our tips to get some innovative company Away Day ideas flowing:
- Ask people what their most awful ideas for a team away day would be. Or the most disastrous team away day ever or what they would least like to see. Choose some of these ideas to explore:
- What is it about these ideas that are so bad?
- What is the absolute opposite of these ideas?
- How can you build on these to make them brilliant?
- Ask people to imagine the company Away Day has happened – what did they see? How did it feel?
- To improve your lists of ideas, ask your team members to run them through a filtering process, like SCAMPER:
- Substitute: Which ideas or parts of ideas might I substitute for something else?
- Combine: Which ideas might be a bit “meh” on their own but might be great if they are combined?
- Adapt: Which ideas are kind of almost there and with a little tweak could become completely magic?
- Modify: What can you change in the way you are using that idea to make it work even better?
- Put to another use: Which ideas are quite good, but would work so much better in another way?
- Eliminate: Which ideas are way too close to the bad ones you want to avoid, and just need to go in the bin!
- Reverse: Which idea can you turn on its head to make it work.
By asking people for ideas you will begin building vital connections before the Away Day itself happens. This also allows you to set the scene for something that your team members might actually value.
The final step
One important, final, step in asking for ideas is to remember to give people feedback on which ideas you chose to use, and which ones were put to one side. Your team members will want to know that their input has been valued. Helping them understand your decision process is vital for current and future participation.
Once you have a few ideas (or hopefully more than just a few ideas!) you can start to work out how to incorporate them into your Away Day as you and your team work towards your objectives.
Do you need a Facilitator to help you come up with some innovative company Away Day ideas?
You may want to involve an expert Away Day facilitator early on to help gathering ideas. After all, we are great at helping you work out the right questions to ask. Equally, it can be just as helpful to wait until you have gathered a few ideas to start you off.
We can then ensure that the company Away Day is not only built on the innovative ideas that you have crowd-sourced, but that it becomes the platform for more innovative thinking to come.
