The Future of Everything covers the innovation and technology transforming the way we live, work and play, with monthly issues on transportation, education, well-being and more. This month is Work, online starting Feb. 2 and in print Feb. 10.
Remember the off-site meeting? For some companies, those traditional company gatherings at hotels, spas and other exotic locations are pointing the way to a new, innovative model for getting employees back to working in person.
Nearly two years after the pandemic sent many white-collar professionals home, bosses are eager to reconvene employees, hoping that in-person interactions will spark new ideas and help to lessen feelings of isolation and Zoom fatigue as Covid-19 drags on. The challenge is figuring out where and how to gather. Some companies ditched offices in recent months, or loosened policies to allow staffers to move away from company locations.
That has many executives rethinking the notion of the annual corporate gathering. For years, off-sites were largely a way to get entire companies or teams together to mark milestones such as a sales kickoff, an end-of-year celebration or a product-strategy summit. But as more companies embrace hybrid work models and fully remote teams, increasingly the concept of the off-site—gathering employees periodically—is looking like a way to strengthen company culture and foster connections among colleagues.
The fear of losing such connections and the benefits that in-person work can bring is spurring companies to look at nontraditional ways to make this happen. In the nascent stages of using off-sites as the new on-site, some companies are considering short gatherings in which staffers meet at hotels, restaurants,
mansions—or even in the office—collaborating on work while also reconnecting socially. They are feeling out how often to meet: Many executives say it may be enough for remote employees to now come together in person once a month, and quarterly in the future.
Some already see a need for new technologies to help with more complicated arrangements. The cloud-services provider
Cloudflare Inc.
has had discussions about developing an internal tool that could help managers plan off-sites and team gatherings, a task that can be tricky when employees are spread across multiple cities, said
Matthew Prince,
the company’s CEO and co-founder.
“What I want a manager to be able to do is to say, ‘Listen, sometime next quarter, I want to get my team together,” Mr. Prince said, adding that managers could say, “find me a place which is the most efficient – meaning most cost effective—the least amount of travel, and everything else, where we can, for five days, come together and meet.”
Ideally, the software would suggest a city and place—say, the third floor of the company’s office in Austin—and a week that would best fit most employees’ calendars, Mr. Prince said. “I don’t want to be in the business of building that software, but unfortunately, I think we’re going to have to,” he said. “This is something we’ll have to figure out how to do.”
At Ethos, a San Francisco-based life insurance provider, the company’s staff of about 350 people works largely remotely, but now holds gatherings for its leadership team roughly every six weeks. While some have been held in company offices, others have taken place at hotels or at the chief technology officer’s backyard fire pit. “The issue you struggle with is not over-packing the agenda because there’s so much good stuff to discuss,” said Ethos chief executive Peter Colis. “You’ve got to leave time for people to enjoy spending time with each other and building trust.”
The company’s offices have morphed into venues for team offsites, weekly team meetings and similar gatherings, Mr. Colis said, and he expects many employees will largely remain at home in a post-Omicron world.
“Even the people who, at the beginning of the pandemic, couldn’t wait to get into the office, and couldn’t wait to see their colleagues on a three-day, four-day, five-day-a-week basis, I think even their behavior has changed,” Mr. Colis said. “Just being able to do an amazing job and wear sweatpants is a difficult value proposition” to give up, he said.
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Teams at the technology giant
Salesforce.com Inc.
have held recent gatherings in a backyard in Palm Desert, Calif., in company offices in New York and at hotels in states including Arizona, said
Brent Hyder,
the company’s chief people officer and president. Team agreements outline how employees will work and how often they’ll come together in person. “The No. 1 danger to Salesforce and other companies is that people are going to become disengaged in the culture of the company,” Mr. Hyder said, one reason his team set a commitment to meet face-to-face once a quarter. Those agreements also help to give employees some long-term certainty about how they will work and gather, he said.
Gathering outside an office, in venues that give employees a chance to go on a walk or to enjoy a picnic, can help forge connections while work discussions go on. Some companies have begun allocating funds to individual teams, meaning just five to 10 people might get together at a ranch in Colorado, a high-end restaurant or a wellness spot in Silicon Valley.
At the Boston technology startup Aidentified, the 26-person staff works virtually, but the company rents two corporate apartments, one in Boston and one near San Francisco, in lieu of offices, so employees can gather when needed. Each apartment is equipped with a conference table, seating areas, a kitchen and bedrooms where out-of-town employees can stay. The roughly 3,000-square-foot Boston space includes a terrace overlooking the Boston Public Library, three bedrooms on a downstairs level, and open areas for people to sit and chat. Each bedroom has a desk and chair—positioned in a way that the bed is not visible on a video conference—in case employees need a private space to work. When employees use the apartments, some colleagues cook, while others order in.
The conversation changes outside of a more formal corporate setting, the company has found. “People end up sharing a lot more when they’re sitting on a cozy couch or a chair than they really do in the stiffness of a conference room,” said Darr Aley, who co-founded the company with his brother, Tom Aley.
The apartments have rules, like quiet hours after 11 p.m., and the company requires employees have a Covid-19 booster shot before entering. It also recommends that they take a rapid Covid-19 test. Those who spend the night have separate bedrooms and bathrooms for privacy. Those who can’t join in person because of family obligations or other reasons can be included through video conference. Because the company controls the environment, Tom Aley said employees can feel more comfortable meeting up during the pandemic. “You don’t have to worry about the risk of the hotel bar, getting in the elevator, anywhere,” he said.
The company says its code of conduct—prohibiting sexual harassment or any kind of demeaning behavior—applies in its corporate apartments. Aidentified’s workers’ compensation insurance will typically also cover employees in the spaces.
Tom Aley said he and his brother have used corporate apartments for similar functions at earlier companies they founded, and appreciated the savings they can provide. (One previous firm they founded, Generate Inc., was bought by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, in 2008.) “When the pandemic hit, I’m like, ‘Well thank God we didn’t sign a multi-year [office] lease and have to be committed to something we can’t use,’” Tom Aley said.
Balancing socializing and work demands at the new off-site is one of the areas that companies will refine as these periodic meetings become more common, management experts say. In the fall, the advertising-technology company AdColony booked the top floor at a boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan as a pop-up office space for employees after giving up its office in the pandemic. Staffers mingled over catered food and huddled together for discussions on a rooftop terrace, said Benjamin Bring, a vice president of sales for the east region. “Half of the time spent is really just banter, and that’s what you miss.”
Mr. Bring had to take a video call from a client at the hotel, but there were no meeting rooms, and it was too noisy to step outside. So he and a coworker stood in a common space, gesturing to colleagues to stay quiet. “We were shoulder-to-shoulder trying to squeeze into his laptop video screen, so I think they got half of my head, half of his,” he said. “It was awkward, but we made fun of it.”
After months of virtual work, the Forté Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for advancing women’s leadership through business education, held a three-day staff off-site in Austin in November. Between staff meetings and leadership development sessions, including a teambuilding activity that called for staffers to divide into groups and build bicycles for a local nonprofit, employees took a boat ride and sang karaoke one evening.
“We can do a lot of business over Zoom,” said Forté CEO Elissa Sangster. “But what you can’t create is those personal connections.”
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