Small business owners can improve productivity by investing in a company retreat. A retreat is an opportunity to engender creativity—a time to remove your nose from the grindstone and lift your head up, a chance to think about what ought to be—and devise steps to get there.
Regardless of the size of your company, the bottom line is that bringing key people together for a retreat is a smart investment. It can be an excellent opportunity for strategic planning and action-focused decision making to increase your sales, establish higher levels of customer loyalty, control overhead, improve overall performance, and drive business growth.
Effectively planned and executed, a retreat is also an excellent platform for reinforcing leadership skills, brainstorming ideas, solving problems, stimulating teamwork, nurturing a sense of camaraderie, and clarifying and reaffirming your organization’s competitive strategy.
Related Article: Effective Small Executive Retreats
It’s important to think carefully and clearly about retreat purposes since they become the foundation for the retreat design. It’s also critical to share the purposes with participants. This will help set their expectations about what the retreat intends to accomplish and define the goals. The key is to strike the right balance when you create a reasonable agenda that doesn’t overload the employees with work during the retreat.
When your employees stop having fun at work, they are more likely to leave, so a company retreat can improve staff retention, according to “Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up,” by Christopher Noxon. Having fun also stimulates creative thinking, which can improve productivity.
Whether you hold the retreat at a cabin in the woods or a hotel downtown, getting away from the day-to-day grind of the office helps your team think and develop creative ideas and is good for business.
This article was originally published by Convention Business Travel
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