A secret weapon in boosting virtual engagement.
As a fully remote technology company, we have the privilege of being *virtually* surrounded by a group of creative minds trained to seek new ways to engage with one another. It is our job, after all: to bring communities together online. So you can imagine how excited we get to design internal team building virtual events that we actually get to participate in instead of observing from the sidelines hidden behind our live event support usernames.
Designing our Special Projects Retreat was no different. The goal? Familiarize a brand new sub-team of 15 members, and get them excited to work together. 80% leisure, 20% business.
Where the idea of ‘Theme’ comes in
We knew this retreat had a tall ask, and we only had a half-day window to achieve our goal. Cut-and-dry educational, informational content alone was not going to serve the retreat’s purpose. And then the word “retreat” sparked a thought: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could host a literal retreat overseas?”
From there, the aesthetic alarm bells rang and didn’t seem to stop. Why couldn’t we create an overseas atmosphere on our very own platform? And so, we began drawing analogies between the journey of a vacation and the journey of team building through our ‘itinerary’ of riveting sessions. In this case study, we will explore where and how these journeys aligned to create not just an experience, but a story.
Our Full ‘Itinerary’
The schedule of games and activities we drew together for the retreat served as the framework for our ‘vacation’ activities. The schedule served as follows:
- Pre-event: an email to set the tone, distribute boarding passes, and encourage bold fashion choices
- Pre-produced welcome: Welcome Aboard
- Live welcome: Meet the Passengers & Crew
- Team scavenger hunt: Island Scavenger Hunt
- Small team check-in: Resort Tour
- Lunch break: Resort Buffet
- Design session brainstorm: An Excursion
- Post-event: an email sharing out a group selfie, scavenger hunt highlights, and the final scavenger hunt leaderboard
Let’s break it down!
Booking our Flight – Pre-Event Engagement
There is no feeling quite like the night before a flight – eagerness, excitement, anticipation… That’s how we wanted our Special Projects team to feel before our equivalent of a ‘flight.’
So, we created individualized ‘boarding passes’ for each member of the team, including their name, physical location, and their team number (which will come into play later).
Once all the boarding passes were created, we sent personalized emails to each individual on the team with the subject line “We’re going on an adventure! ✈️😉”. Each email was equipped with snazzy boarding passes, the retreat’s ‘itinerary,’ as well as some metaphorical calls to action:
- “Pack your bags”
- “Lather on some sunscreen”
- “Call your ride to the airport!”
The one literal call-to-action that we included was to bring their favorite vacation accessory to sport on video, be it a funky hat, sunglasses, or a Hawaiian shirt.
We later received feedback from our team that this email played a pivotal role in establishing the atmosphere of the retreat and sparking curiosity beforehand. I mean, how often do you find this kind of content in your work inbox?
Then came The Big Day…
Our Resort – the Event Lobby
From the moment participants entered the space, we wanted them to feel enveloped in our vacation theme. With a platform as visually customizable as ours, this part was easy and, as the event designer, really fun! Here’s what it looked like:
There were two ‘drop-in’ sections of our virtual retreat space that were designed for asynchronous perusal. In other words, they didn’t serve to be clicked on during a specific session or timeframe; they existed to be perused at any point in time.
The first was called ‘Passengers & Crew’ and comprised of tiles dedicated to each individual. As you can see, they were designed to look as if each person was looking out their airplane window, which was very successful visually.
Within each member’s tile was a personalized, Matchbox-branded “passport” with neat information about each person which we collected ahead of time in a Typeform. We also put attendee chats right beside each passport so others could ask questions about the fun facts, which created a special kind of engagement that was quite neat to watch play out.
The other drop-in category we designed was our “Amenities” section, equipped with fun theme-related tips and tricks! In The Spa tile we put ideas for exercising self-care, in The Bar we shared delicious cocktail recipes, and in The Pool we linked to a playlist with sick Reggae tunes participants could chill out to. This part was 0% work-related and 100% leisure.
We made sure to reference these drop-in sections on several occasions throughout the day, and we also slid in some Scavenger Hunt tasks which sent folks on a quest to find information within these tiles (ex: Who started an underground cookie business in high school? Hint: This information can be found in the “Passengers & Crew” section of our virtual space!)
Welcome Aboard – Pre-Produced Welcome
Our very first session of the day was titled “Welcome Aboard!” and consisted of a humorous message from our “head flight attendant” AKA Content Lead, Co-Event Designer, & Author-of-this-Article Mishka (me)! The video was produced fully committing to the airplane atmosphere, as you can tell by the photos below.
Boy was this effective in getting people excited about the day ahead. Even our non-morning people were active in the chat, which set a fabulous precedent for our live session to follow!
Meet the Passengers & Crew – Live Welcome
Since our pre-produced welcome already served to get the motor running and bypass the non-morning-people grumpiness (yes, I am included in that group) we saw high amounts of video participation in our ice breaker that followed a brief introduction. As a rule-of-thumb for team building sessions, introductions should almost always be brief – get to the good stuff quickly! During this time, we also got to see everyone’s vacation accessories for the first time, which was hilarious, heartwarming, and just what we needed to start the day off in a great mood.
Island Scavenger Hunt
It isn’t an internal Matchbox event without a good ol’ Scavenger Hunt. Yep, a Scavenger Hunt online!
Remember when we mentioned that everyone was given a team number on the boarding passes? This is where they came into play. Their number aligned with the team they would be working with to accomplish as many tasks as possible before the end of the day.
There were a few ways we used the hunt strategically to produce specific outcomes:
- We engineered teams to consist of team members who hadn’t yet worked together before. This way, they could get more acquainted while sharing a common goal and, perhaps, some fun memories.
- On the hunt checklist, we chose tasks which either provided us with meaningful social media content, or which served to allow team members to learn more about one another.
We gave teams until the end of the workday to complete their tasks before we tallied up the points, and you bet we seriously hyped up the announcement of our winners post-event!
The two sessions to follow served as the meat of our retreat (an unintentional but catchy rhyme).
Resort Tour – Small Team Check-In
During this time, we separated our Special Projects team into smaller breakout rooms composed of the sub-teams who would work together on a daily basis. Here, leadership led conversation built to get to know everyone, establish goals, and instill purpose. Quite straightforward and to-the-point, we specifically put this session later in the day after our icebreaker-based activities.
After the Resort Tour, we left a full hour for lunch. Another pro-tip when it comes to design team building events (especially online): Be generous when building in breaks! Your team will subconsciously thank you later through the copious amount of participation they exert as a result of all that recharge time.
Many chose to use our lunch break to sneak in a few more Scavenger Hunt points! (Little-known-but-perhaps-obvious secret: our winning team did this 😉)
An Excursion – Design Session Brainstorm
We reconvened after lunch for what we called ‘An Excursion’, which was really just a Design Session. Design Sessions are built to brainstorm new ideas, which in turn served to get people excited about the potential our new team held.
This one resulted in 27 pages of new ideas. We aren’t kidding. And what else could leave you more inspired than over two dozen pages of fresh ideas waiting to be implemented?!
So, our Design Session was a great note to end our retreat on. Collaboration, inspiration, and new ideas!
Flying Back Home – Post-Event Engagement
Once an event is over, in the midst of patting yourself on the back, it’s often easy to breeze right over post-event engagement. Following up post-event is a great way to drive home the intentionality of your team building event and also provide mementos, or in our case, ‘souvenirs!’
To finish off our Special Projects Retreat, we drafted up an email to:
- Thank everyone for their participation
- Share out highlights and funny moments exchanged throughout the day
- Unveil some of the quirkiest group Zoom selfies
- Announce the winners of our cut-throat Scavenger Hunt!
Intention Drives Outcome
Our Special Projects retreat was monumental in discovering the power of tone and atmosphere in driving our purpose. It began with a goofy theme and resulted in a meaningful, well-rounded journey which had our participants captivated from the moment they clicked into the space all the way until they logged out after the final session.
Within a half-day event, our team of predominantly unfamiliar members turned into a squad of giggly, engaged, inspired individuals who left already feeling a sense of belonging before even beginning in their new roles.
Plus, they got to skip the sunburns…
