Taking your team away? Here's what to remember...

Connecting with individuals remains one of the most valuable opportunities for a business. So, when we start planning our yearly breakaways, we know that we need to think carefully about our team and the value that can come from spending this valuable time together. Our execs attended both breakaways – first with our Professional Services team in Zimbabwe, and then with our Support Services team at Glenburn Lodge. This wasn’t simply because they wanted to be able to take part in all the fun, but because they leapt at the chance to get to spend this time with each and every member of our team, getting to know how we can continue to create value for them, and with them. The itineraries for both breakaways were carefully planned to ensure our awesome teams would feel comfortable but stimulated; challenged but encouraged; and, above all, valued.

It’s not just about fun and reward though – in order to get real value out of a breakaway, good connections need to come hand in hand with good communication. We have an ambitious set of goals going through to 2020, and we know that by communicating our plans to our team, and encouraging them to add their own input, we’re building a future focus that they can get behind – actioning real steps to get there. So, among the elephant back safaris, team building, sunset cruises and tasty meals, we built in important collaborative conversations around our future and the value we create for our clients, and these were reinforced in a follow-on workshop we had a couple weeks after the breakaways. We’ve employed some of the smartest people around, and by talking with them instead of at them, we’re creating real value for both them and The Worx Group as a whole.

When your business is doing well, it’s easy for a team getaway to turn into an expensive jamboree, forgotten as soon as your employees are back at their desks. Don’t let this happen: we’ve worked hard to make sure that real valuable connections are made, and that these will live long beyond the flight home. It’s no secret that at The Worx Group, we believe that working hard and playing hard should always go hand in hand, and because we feel so strongly about the importance of developing real people to take real actions in order to get real results, our trips were as much about exploring ideas to really elevate the way we connect with our clients as they were about rewarding our teams for their hard work. A weekend away can be action-packed and fun, but it’s the value you create in the long run that make the real difference.