CLIENT: Environmental Engineering Consulting Services Organization
SERVICE: All-Employee Retreat
Creating a multi-sensory, interactive experience for 100 employees rooted in play, culture, equity and purpose.
A rapidly growing consulting company wanted to bring all employees from 3 states together for a full day of learning, relationship building, alignment to shared purpose, and diversity equity inclusion training. Due to the pandemic, all employees had not gathered in person for 2 years, almost one-third of them were new, and all needed to be integrated into the emerging organizational cultural fabric.
How We Helped
We created a playful and multi-sensory day with arts-based activities including improv and Lego. In the lobby, we constructed an interactive exhibit that displayed each employee’s artful alias, complete with colors and polaroid pictures. We invited a nationally recognized DEI expert and speaker to lead DEI 101 training. Our CEO, Jyoti facilitated rotating table topics and interactive capacity-building sessions.
Pivoting In The Moment
The client requested some changes to the schedule in the middle of the day so that they could take a group photo outside before a rainstorm hit. We moved our empathy-building improv activities forward by an hour, and seamlessly coordinated with facility staff to move furniture so that we could make the best use of the space and support group activities without missing a beat.
Our Results
The team walked away with a deeper sense of strategic alignment to the company purpose, and renewed skills to connect across skills, roles, and identities.
01. The retreat resulted in clearer and agreed upon improvement areas for delivering more consistent performance in support of client needs , based on best practices from the stories that were shared.
02. Participants reported feeling a greater sense of ownership and alignment with both the company’s employee stock ownership plan, and the company's purpose of sustainability and climate health.
03. The majority of the company’s employees of color approached the facilitation team during the break to express gratitude for addressing a need that affected their employee experience in significant ways.
“You all made the day fly by effortlessly while invoking some much-needed discussions on employee purpose and culture as well as strategies to help us communicate more effectively and openly. Fun and educational and inspiring, who can ask for anything more?”
— Jeff Kaspar, Principal Scientist