Team Away Days
Strategic team away days
We deliver virtual and in-person tailored team day experiences. Each away day experience is designed uniquely for your specific audience to create team cohesion, engagement, foster relationships and greater communication.
Each day’s experience we design builds trust, greater collaboration and understanding. Bringing teams together in a meaningful way that suits the nature of each unique team.
People come away from an LTT designed away day with a greater sense of understanding and connection to their team, and each other. So whatever stage of team development you are in be it forming, storming, norming or performing don;’t forget to invest in your team especially now when we are all working more remotely.
Clients who’ve utilised our away day services
More to away days than just fun and games
At Let’s Talk Talent, we’ve run more than our fair share of team away days. We truly believe they are a great way to generate trust and collaboration. But they also need careful planning.
Team building events are not just about getting everyone in a room to quickly present the yearly objectives before moving on to ‘the fun part’ and making cocktails or going bowling. They need a clear purpose and defined outcomes to inspire and energise people. They take time to organise in order to be effective and contribute to reaching corporate objectives without completely overwhelming participants. So start with first principles of why you want to run, what you want to achieve and work back from there.
Let’s Talk Talent provided thought leadership and expertise to shape and facilitate an impactful Away Day for our Senior Leadership Team. This unlocked important conversations and shaped concrete actions to improve our effectiveness as a team.
Stacey Heanue, People Director, The Roald Dahl Story Company
Setting your intention
Away days can always be beneficial to your team. Whether your event is organised quarterly, annually or on an ad hoc basis, the important thing to remember is to create it with your current context in mind, and to ensure it forms part of how you lead and manage your people.
The first thing to get right though, is your purpose. What are you trying to achieve with your away day? Or as we like to say, what’s the big exam question you want to answer? Are you trying to get your team fully aligned ahead of a new project starting? Or are they in a storming phase and an intervention is needed? Each event should be designed specifically around your audience and unique organisational context to be truly successful in creating employee engagement.
Away days during the forming, storming and norming phases
At Let’s Talk Talent, we are big fans of using team building events to strengthen team dynamics.But there is a time and a place to hold them, so that you can get the best results possible.
Those at the forming stage need to get to know each other better in order to fully understand each other’s strengths, challenges and ultimately work better together.
Running an away day to get your team out of the storming phase will require a different agenda. Your event should be about boosting morale, re-energising the troops and making sure everyone understands where you are going as a team, and what each person needs to do to get you there.
If your team has reached the norming stage, they are communicating well, respecting each other and relying on one another. You may therefore think you’ve got nothing to worry about, and that a team building event isn’t needed, but an away day focused on ideation, innovation and finding new ways to encourage creativity could be just what you need to finally break through to the performing stage. Whatever stage your team is in, we’ll have plenty of options for a tailored experience to suit.
The importance of away days in a hybrid working world
Remote and hybrid working have made team bonding difficult. Whilst technology has been a great help, operating remotely for so long has made it hard for team members to get to know each other.
We know that forging deep and meaningful connections and learning each other’s preferred ways of working doesn’t just happen organically anymore.
That’s where we can help managers generate trust and collaboration within their teams, and replace those all-important water-cooler moments in more interesting ways.
Let’s Talk Talent provided thought leadership and expertise to shape and facilitate an impactful Away Day for our Senior Leadership Team. This unlocked important conversations and shaped concrete actions to improve our effectiveness as a team.
Stacey Heanue, People Director, The Roald Dahl Story Company
Our strategic team away day experts
Catherine Wilson
Senior Consultant
Catherine has worked in Talent, HR and Learning and Development for over 20 years. The variety of industries she’s experienced include; retail, travel, manufacturing, utilities and media.
With a broad range of experience in managing HR, Talent and L&D departments, Catherine understands what it takes to drive change and implement talent initiatives. She’s adept at thinking of creative solutions that solve real problems.
Rebecca Longman
Senior Consultant
Rebecca has a MSc in Occupational Psychology, subsequently spent the last 14 years as both an in-house and external consultant in the manufacturing, food, healthcare, financial, and technology industries with organisations all over the world including Bupa, Comerica, BP, Mastercard, Zoetis, Vimeo, Ingredion and many more.
She is an ICF-certified coach and a self-published author of Let’s Love to Work a book about how people create careers they love.
Her specialist skills are employee engagement, skills and competency framework creation, organisational strategy, change management, training design, coaching, narrative creation, and leadership development.
Yvette Janse van Rensburg
Senior Consultant
An accomplished HR, Talent, and People Development professional drawing on 15+ years’ experience working across SME, Corporate, global geographies and complex stakeholder environments in the Built Environment, Recruitment and Real Estate sectors.
Yvette has a passion for supercharging innovative Talent Management & People Development strategies for future focused organisations, creating moments that matter for people & businesses to thrive.
Away Day Specialists based in London
Let’s Talk Talent is a talent management and organisational development consultancy based in London, UK. We help our clients get, keep and grow brilliant people.
We work with a range of businesses from small SMEs to large multinational brands that operate globally.
Come and find out how Let’s Talk Talent can help you transform your performance management process into a modern performance experience.
Team Away Days Services
- Team Away Day consultants
- Corporate Away Day companies
- Strategic Away day providers
- Away Days providers
- Senior leadership away days
- Department away days
- Away Day facilitators
FAQs
A team away day is a purposefully designed experience, either virtual or in-person (but most impactful in-person), tailored to a specific team’s needs. It goes beyond traditional team-building activities, focusing on creating team cohesion, enhancing communication, and building trust.
Each day is uniquely crafted to suit the nature of the team, promoting engagement and relationships among team members.
At Let’s Talk Talent, we believe in going beyond the surface to create meaningful connections and understanding within teams. It’s so much more than just bowling and drinks!
An organisation or team looking to enhance collaboration, communication, and trust will find team away days very valuable.
Whether your team is in the forming, storming, norming, or performing stage, Let’s Talk Talent offers tailored experiences to address specific organisational needs and context.
From newly formed teams needing introductions to established teams seeking creative ideation, our team away days cater to a diverse range of audiences.
No, team away days are not limited to one-time events. They can be organised quarterly, annually, or on an ad hoc basis, depending on your team’s needs and context.
The frequency of away days can vary, and their ongoing implementation can contribute significantly to team development, especially in the evolving landscape of remote and hybrid working.
The more important question to focus on when you’re planning your next team away day is; what are you trying to achieve with this intervention? The frequency becomes secondary.
In today’s remote and hybrid work environments and also dare we say VUCA world, forging deep connections and understanding colleagues’ working styles is even more important than ever but also challenging. Away days provide a dedicated space to build trust, collaboration, and boost morale.
They offer a structured approach to address specific team challenges, boost engagement, and contribute to achieving corporate objectives. Careful planning is needed to ensure away days are not just fun activities but purposeful experiences with defined outcomes.
Corporate away days involve a thoughtful and purpose-driven approach. Let’s Talk Talent works with clients to understand their objectives, team dynamics, and organisational context.
Events are then designed to align with these goals, whether focusing on team formation, addressing challenges during the storming phase, or fostering creativity during norming.
Activities range from team-building exercises to ideation sessions, ensuring a customised experience that resonates with your team’s unique requirements.
Success can be measured through various metrics, including improved team communication, enhanced collaboration, and the achievement of predefined objectives.
It really comes back to what was the purpose for the session in the first place and working backwards from there. Post-event feedback, increased team morale, and positive changes in team dynamics are also indicators of success.
Let’s Talk Talent collaborates with clients to establish clear goals and outcomes, allowing for meaningful evaluation of the impact of team away days on both individual and team levels.
No, team away days are beneficial for teams at all stages of development. Whether your team is forming, storming, norming, or performing, Let’s Talk Talent provides tailored experiences to meet your unique needs.
Away days offer opportunities for improvement, growth, and innovation, making them valuable for teams seeking to enhance their dynamics, communication, and collaboration, regardless of their current performance stage.
Got an away day project in mind?
You’ve come this far, why turn back now?
If you have someone who might benefit from some coaching or a challenge you need help with, or just want to find out more about what we do, let’s talk.
Related Team Away Day resources
CONSULTANCY
Book a tailored team building day for your teams.
We offer a wide variety of options for team building. Enquire to find out how we can support you best.
CASE STUDY
Helping King’s College hit the reset button with a team away day
What they required from us wasn’t a diagnosis: they wanted help figuring out how to hit the reset button in a way that was highly creative, different, and full of energy. In short, nothing beige.
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The complete list of tools for team development
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Using the EDGE Framework for effective development conversations
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Navigating the first stage of team development: forming
How team leaders can navigate the forming stage of team development.
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Getting out of the storming phase of team development
How managers can help their teams fight complacency and become high-performing units.
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Getting out of the storming phase of team development
Team development isn’t a linear process, and not everyone goes through the usual forming, storming, norming and performing progression in that particular order.
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Reaching the performing stage of team development
How team leaders can maintain a high performance benchmark in a constantly evolving context
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The best tools & techniques for team development
Reaching the stage where people are engaged, motivated and working effectively requires effort and sometimes, a little help from the organisation.
YOUTUBE
How to run a kickass corporate away day for team building
Jo explains her top tips for running an effective away day.
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10 worst team building activities
These are the cringy team building activities to avoid.
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An Innovative way to develop your leaders. The Leader of the Pack Workshop by Let’s Talk Talent
Find out why dogs are the perfect leadership development metaphor in this memorable workshop.
What else can we do?
Management Development
Team away days are brilliant to bring together teams.
For more long lasting effects you may want to consider management development so you don’t end up relying on away days from external partners.
Team Development
Team away days can be the start of a longer team development intervention.
Team away days are a great way to bring together teams that don’t always work together in the same location.
For deeper and longer interventions discover more about our team development services