Addressing Staff Challenges & Creating Company Culture, Vision and Values
Client: Creating Company Culture at High-end Digital Marketing & Brand Launching Firm
Participants: 26
Format: 3 day Strategic Retreat
Location: Partnered Retreat Centre, Maple Ridge, British Columbia
The Challenge:
The company was feeling over-taxed and experiencing an exceptionally high stress load – both individually and as a whole -. Staff were under pressure to produce results 24/7 across 4 different cities in North America. The need for creating company culture and dynamic was becoming critical before the results of burn-out and disenfranchisement set in. Staff needed a greater degree of work-life balance, shared workloads, and positive engagement.
The Purpose:
Make the company’s first off-site retreat incredibly memorable. We needed to bring everyone together and to build a clear sense of support, ‘togetherness’ and collaboratively creating company culture. This program was based on previous experience working with the company owner elsewhere.
Our Approach:
We conducted an extensive pre-retreat questionnaire to help engage the employees’ voices. In doing so, we assessed what was most important, including soliciting concerns, pains, opportunities and possible ideas for solutions. Upon arrival to initiate the 3-day immersive program, we jump-started the experience with an amazing adventure race in the woods! The next few days consisted of collaborative exercises and leadership assessments to strengthen personal and group development. We carefully interwove team-building and trust-building activities, as well as disciplined process for analyzing the questionnaire results.
After that, evenings were spent in fun, creative social time and around the campfire. Each exercise contributed to creating an agreed set of actionable-values (Maxims). Each person could live and work by these on a daily basis. Therefore, having collaboratively created the values, we had given a strong sense of belonging and foundation for addressing concerns raised in the surveys. Subsequently, staff and leadership felt a security in resolving issues and accepting issues that were synonymous with the industry.
The Results:
In full, the retreat achieved all of the goals set forth by the client. Each team member left with a stronger sense of belonging, responsibility and tools to address any future concerns. Above all, the client responded very positively. After a few follow-up consultations to solidify some of the processes, they promptly booked another retreat. As a result, this booking showed their commitment to their people and their culture, and to keep everyone on track with their goals.