Last week I posted C.O.R.E. tips for your Communication, Opportunity, Resources, and Engagement efforts concerning employee engagement.

(You can download these tips at the Kiosk.)

Today, I want to share expanded thoughts on the Opportunity tip recommending the staff or full-business retreat.  Here’s what the original tip looked like in last week’s posting.

Staff/Business Retreat. Too often viewed as an exorbitant time- and money-expense, even a half-day retreat for your immediate staff or (better still) your entire organization proves to be an engagement generating opportunity. Make a concentrated effort to have increased employee engagement a defined outcome of the event–whether you publicize that desire or not—and see long-term benefits.

Here are 3 pretty certain benefits you can derive from either a half-day or full-day retreat:

1. Increased attention to the business culture, a subject assumed but too rarely talked about. Your business culture is both cause and effect of your success or failure … wavering in between the two. The more you promote and engage in open discussion of the culture, the more timely and effective that culture becomes.
2. Increased awareness and agreement of the meaning of employee engagement. That includes what engagement means to the positive and productive operations of the business. This lets all players have the same picture of engagement–what it is, what it does, and what it means to her/him individually. Such common view generates increased engagement.
3. Increased appreciation of the value of performance improvement. Without having to hammer home the need for continual improvement, you can demonstrate with stories, case studies, and individual illustrations that engagement is the most significant driver of self-empowered performance improvement.

The label “retreat” may have a negative connotation. A retreat does not have to be expensive, off-site, nor lots of fluff and little substance. Your retreat can be set up to generate specific, measurable action items for which everyone becomes accountable.

Besides, who says you have to call it a “retreat”?

You may want to check out our 4+1 Culture to Engage programs.