The question tends to come late in the planning of an offsite, usually once the venue and the dates are settled: and what do we do as an activity? Someone opens a catalogue, picks whatever is still available, and the team arrives to find a format they have already done twice elsewhere. Here are the five habits that lead there, and what replaces them.
An employee who recognises the exercise knows how it will end. They know the role expected of them, the closing debrief and the concluding sentence. Agreement stays polite, and the energy the offsite was meant to produce goes elsewhere.
The cost is double. The activity delivers little of what was expected of it, and it sends a signal: the programme was filled rather than designed. On a day that represents thirty working days in total, that is expensive.
The usual order runs: dates, venue, activity, agenda. So the activity gets chosen before anyone knows what the day has to produce, and it ends up disconnected from the rest.
What works: writing down the two or three decisions the offsite has to enable, then choosing an activity that sets up the matching frame of mind. An executive committee facing an old disagreement and a team that has just welcomed ten new joiners need two different outings.
"It went well last year" is the most common argument, and the most misleading. What worked was often the novelty. Repeated identically, the same format becomes an expected tradition, then a formality.
What works: keeping what people liked, which is usually the frame (short, outdoors, small groups), and changing what happens inside it.
A survey sent three weeks before, with the deposit already paid, is closer to an announcement than a consultation. The answers show it, and so does the message the team receives.
What works: asking an open question very early, when the dates are being set: what have you already done at an offsite, and what have you never tried? Two minutes of answer per person, and the list of formats to rule out fills itself in.
An impressive activity photographs well and tells badly. Skydiving, a racing circuit, a zip line: these formats create two groups, those taking part and those watching, and the second goes home with the opposite of the intended feeling.
What works: favouring an activity everyone can join, where competence gets redistributed. On a shallow lagoon, the most confident person on a paddleboard is rarely the one you expected, and that shift is what produces the shared memory.
The last habit is to occupy every slot, for fear of dead time. Yet the conversations that unblock issues happen in the gaps: the walk between two rooms, the hour before dinner, the moment when nothing is expected of anyone.
What works: planning two open slots a day, announced as such. An exclusive-use venue makes them useful, because there is a garden, a terrace or a path to spend them in.
They treat the activity as a box to tick at the end of a list. Yet it is the one sequence of the offsite where hierarchy fades, which is exactly why it deserves to be chosen early rather than last.
A precise answer to all three points to a provider who knows their subject. A vague answer to the second is worth pressing on.
By asking before booking, as an open question: what each person has already done at an offsite, and what they have never tried. Sent while the dates are being set, the question is a consultation; sent after booking, it is an announcement.
Those where the physical effort stays moderate and competence gets redistributed. On the Étang de Thau, a paddleboard or kayak outing at first light works from the sporty colleague to the one who is less so, provided an accompanied boat option is available in the same slot.
An hour to an hour and a half, once, rather than half a day. Beyond that the experience becomes an ordeal for part of the group, and the working programme suffers.
Why a shared adventure brings a team closer than an announced cohesion exercise, and how to build an outing on the étang de Thau that includes everyone.
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Why an offsite held away from the office produces different conversations, and the five practical conditions worth having in place.
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