7 Awesome Ideas You Can Use To Bring Your Staff Together

Hello! This is our third article about Remo's Virtual Retreat! Here are some things we did as a team to celebrate the end of the year. I hope you find these ideas useful for your own company. Please don't forget to read my first two articles about the retreat for more creative things you can do to celebrate your company as well. You can find those articles listed below.

Don't forget to check out the cool meme generator we used (mentioned in the paragraphs below)!

Day Four! Dress-Up Theme: National Costume

Agenda

• 30 minutes Freestyle Rap Artist
• 30 minutes Table Prompts Networking
• 5 minutes Raffle
• 1.5 hour Talent Show
• 10 minutes Vote for Best Dressed

Freestyle Rap Artist

Joseph also arranged a fantastic rap/comedy performance by Chris Turner. Chris' rapid freestyle raps and improvisation skills amazed our entire team. We particularly enjoyed his rap segments from audience prompts (he even challenged us to give him obscure words, where we ended up giving him topics like "Plankton" and "Indian Weddings"). Even with our team scattered across the world, Chris' performance united us all, brought huge laughs, and was unanimous.

Structured Networking

We organized a few different structured networking sessions. These sessions were run perfectly on Remo as this is precisely what we were built for: small group conversations where people can connect more intimately and create meaningful connections. In addition, we wanted people to speak to other people on the team who they had never met before. 

To avoid too many awkward silences, we attempted to make these portions extremely structured and incorporated as many conversation starters and prompts as possible. We found this made it much easier for people to get to know one another without struggling to discuss common topics.

Here Are A Few Ways We Structured Everything

Game: Never Have I Ever

Most people are extremely familiar with this game, making it an easy one to incorporate. We made it even more seamless by including 50+ never have I ever statements on the whiteboards on each table within Remo, so people could use those instead of making any up on the spot if they didn't feel comfortable. Each person had 3 lives, and once they ran out of lives (by admitting to the various never have I ever statements), they would move tables to join a new group of people. 

Table Prompts

We utilized 3 main features of Remo for this one. 1) Editable table names, 2) Shuffle mode, 3) Timer. We first changed tables name to conversation prompts such as “Share your proudest moment this year,” “Share an embarrassing story,” “Discuss your favorite movie or TV show and why?”. Then, we would set the timer for 5 minutes, and people would use that time to connect and discuss based on the table prompt. At the 5 minute mark, we would then hit “shuffle,” which would immediately shuffle up our attendees, and people would repeat again but with a new table prompt and a new group of people. This was one of our most popular segments throughout the whole retreat, and people really enjoyed the structured flow.

Vision Boarding

Given that we were approaching the end of 2021 and were having a lot of internal team discussions about the company vision of 2022, we wanted to give people an opportunity to discuss and talk about their own personal or professional aspirations for the year ahead. We broke up into small teams to chat in more intimate groups.

Meme Challenge

We broke everyone up into small groups of 5-6 people, and using an easy meme generator, we created a fun hour or creating memes about work, funny things that happened at the retreat, and different people within our teams. This turned out to be a massive hit as people got extremely creative, and we all got a kick out of different Remo-specific memes, which showcased how funny our entire team is!

Talent Show

The talent show was one of the most popular events from our retreat last year, and we wanted to do it again. We got 2x more talent submitted and what we found is that this is one of the best ways to learn about each other and be amazed at each other’s talents.

Day 5 - Awards Show! Dress-Up Theme: Oscars & Black Tie

Agenda

• 5 minutes Raffle
• 15 minutes Meme Challenge
• 1 hour Awards show, Nominations and Winner Announcements
• 15 minutes Vision Boarding Activity
• 10 minutes Vote for Best Dressed
• 10 minutes Closing Remarks

Talent and Awards Shows

To focus on one of our core retreat goals, which was to celebrate our team's achievements, skills, and talents, we had both a talent show and an awards show. Our talent show was again a massive hit with the team, with over 12 different acts ranging from musical performances to cultural dances to cooking shows and party tricks! In addition, we planned out our Oscars-inspired award shows to encompass both serious and funny aspects, ranging from our "Unmatched Dedication" award through to our "Fashionista Award" and "Loudest Typist" to keep the awards show lighthearted and fun.

Scattered throughout the week, we included prizes for best dressed (we had a different dress-up theme each day!), raffle prizes (Christmas hampers, AirPods, Nintendo switches, and more!). Everyone also got a food and drink allowance to ensure people felt they could have a good time with beers, champagne, pizza, sweets, or whatever they fancied.

Stay tuned next week to find out how the virtual retreat went with my amazing team!

To read the first two articles, please visit "How To Appreciate and Celebrate Your Employees!" and "How Remo Created Our 2021 Virtual Annual Retreat—with 92% Positive Feedback," to learn more.

Thank you for reading!