A Powerful Complement to Employee Retreats and Off-Sites

July 2022 — By T.J. Duane

The corporate world has experienced seismic shifts over the last two years, placing more power in the hands of employees than in employers. Salaries and standard benefits such as PTO and healthcare were always the traditional incentives to attract and retain talent.

Now, employees want a healthy culture that fosters growth and supports various communities in the workplace. And, with hybrid and remote work increasingly becoming the norm, off-site events are becoming less about tradition and more about strengthening company culture.

If remote employee engagement isn’t a daily priority for your organization, getting anyone to attend off-site events will be even more of a challenge. So, how do you increase attendance and participation in these new initiatives?

Welcome the New Normal with Open Arms

While the tech firms of Silicon Valley have long touted the benefits of a remote and/or hybrid work lifestyle, this structure rose in popularity in the last two years as a result of the pandemic. Noting the cost savings and productivity boosts, many CEOs opted to keep remote and hybrid structures in place. So, instead of requiring employees to come to an office every day, many companies are gathering via off-sites instead.

Without the physical close proximity, how can you still build a strong, inclusive, and collaborative company culture? Understandably, knowing you’ll have less in-person interaction may incite a bit of anxiety for you as a team leader, especially with mounting pressure to retain employees. However, when you embrace these new work-from-home and work-from-anywhere trends and creatively connect with your employees as they navigate this new world too, you’ll see loyalty and satisfaction build.

Say Goodbye to Traditional Employee Engagement Methods

Sure, some people get excited to receive useful company swag like a hoodie, travel coffee mug, or pack of branded notebooks. That said, these minor perks don’t do much in the long run for remote employee engagement or employee retention, which is something to consider when you digest the fact that some 50 million Americans left their offices in the last two years in one way or another. And with 61% of employees choosing not to go into their workplace despite having a physical office, innovation in engagement is even more crucial. Unfortunately, a Slack message, employee orientation, generic email, and branded sticker are nice gestures but do little to help develop the overall culture and community you’re trying to foster. Instead, try to focus on incorporating customization and personalization in your onboarding experience and building more enticing activities for employee engagement.

Using BrightCrowd to Complement Off-Site Experiences

Your company’s off-site events as well as its business networking events may be missing something major: personalization. When you bring BrightCrowd into the mix, you can welcome team members in a way that allows for higher employee engagement and retention overall. Why? Because BrightCrowd books focus on the whole person narrative and allow employees to develop meaningful relationships by uncovering who they are outside the office. When you consider how isolating working remotely can be, the opportunity to show your coworkers who you are when you’re away from your desk is much more enticing than any welcome Zoom.

Companies who use BrightCrowd as a way to meaningfully engage employees, see high employee engagement levels by bringing everyone together digitally. Through a digital team book, employees of all different backgrounds, specialties, and communication styles can share meaningful personal updates and find common interests that drive team collaboration and productivity.

HR departments and management can benefit from BrightCrowd just as much as employees do by providing a wealth of knowledge and fun facts about their new employees that can later be used in curating tailored welcome experiences. Learning something that makes them who they are, no matter how small, can be used to make an employee feel instantly at home.

BrightCrowd’s approach to whole-person data allows employers to ensure that those critical first 45 days include more individualized and meaningful experiences, rather than a generic experience that doesn’t create or deepen any connection. Employee engagement managers and HR professionals may feel they have their work cut out for them in this new normal, but BrightCrowd makes remote employee engagement easy while creating opportunities for long-lasting connections. Books launch in as little as one day with little-to-no manual effort required.

Contact us today to start experiencing the benefits of a connected workforce at a fraction of the cost of other employee engagement strategies.

T.J. Duane