Benefits of Company Away Days
Do you ever feel nervous before a company away day?
Has your workload left you feeling guilty about taking time for socialising with your coworkers? If you agree with the above sentiments then we hope that we can convince you to not let this impact your decision to join in and embrace some time in a non-working environment with your colleagues. Whilst some might argue that team days are pointless and a distraction from ‘real work’, we at Butterfly Data believe firmly in the importance of team building and creating spaces for creative recuperation in a professional context. After reviewing some of the potential benefits, you will hopefully see how worthwhile and enjoyable these days can be for the whole team. Here are some notable reasons to consider taking a company away day.
Employee benefits
Team bonding - a classic benefit gained from getting your team together outside of an exclusively professional context, comes general bonding between employees. This time can be so useful in getting people to know each other a little better, in interacting together, and in providing common ground and memories to cement thriving interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
Improved communication - similarly to the above, in engaging with colleagues in an away day setting, particularly when working through icebreakers and team building exercises - these out of the box tasks require robust and creative communication, which can often be carried over into working situations as well.
Stress relief - a time to purposefully put down work and to focus on both cohesion and general wellbeing.
Increases morale - the ability to kick back and undertake exciting activities with your work can be an excellent way to increase employee morale.
Opportunity to learn about one another - a key part of communication in these contexts is to share with your colleagues, and naturally this can provide the opportunity to find out a little more about what your colleagues do and what their day-to-day life looks like. This learning is helpful in developing interprofessional relationships.
Encourages healthy competition - sometimes a little competition is healthy, and often a company away day is the perfect time to inject some competitive and spirited activity into the team in a friendly context.
Company Benefits
Employee retention - the more employees feel valued, looked after, and engaged with, usually the more likely they are to want to stay in that professional environment.
Opportunity to assess potential - whilst potential is usually measured purely within a professional context, through performance, mentoring feedback, and other such mechanisms, these more casual contexts can display areas of creativity or interpersonal management which might have otherwise been overlooked. From these more relaxed settings there can be areas of potential which can be assessed and developed further in the workplace.
Looking after employee health – both physical and mental health can be looked after by taking time away from the daily grind and an employee away day can help contribute to this.
Gaining feedback - an excellent forum in which to gather all employees and allow space to provide feedback and queries to the management where the atmosphere is less restrictive than it might otherwise be.
Bouncing ideas from one another – thinking outside the box!
Culturally your company stands out from the crowd - ultimately, providing a space for team members to relax more and bond with each other, and all the benefits this provides to both individuals and the company as a whole, speaks volumes for how the company values its employees. The optics of this value is not to be underestimated on how a company can be perceived in the wider community.
(Appendix 1)
Fun fact: Researchers at the University of Oxford have found a happy employee will be 13% more productive. This, however, does not necessarily mean increased working hours but simply increased productivity within their scheduled working day. This provides not only a benefit in produced work for the company, but allows this increase to not come at the expense of an employee’s personal non-work time. (Appendix 2)
Butterfly Data have recently had a wonderful family event day at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, we had great feedback from our team and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the day. Our itinerary for the day consisted of the following; ice breaker activity, general family fun quiz, activity backpacks & Butterfly Data company jumpers.
See below some of the fun from the day!
So, in conclusion, we would heartily recommend looking at facilitating an employee away day to improve company relationships and to provide a space for more relaxed activities with your team. Give it a try and you never know just how much good it could do!
Appendix
1 - https://dorsetchamber.co.uk/top-7-reasons-to-take-your-staff-on-a-team-away-day/
2 - https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-10-24-happy-workers-are-13-more-productive