Out of the office: jumpstart business planning with corporate retreats and meetings.

• Author: Mischel, Marie
• Position: Corporate Meetings & Retreats

High-profile junkets to exotic locales drew the ire of the public when it came to light that companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG were taking such trips while bleeding red ink. Since then, executives have become much more conscious about public perception, but corporate retreats still offer plenty of return on investment, experts say.

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Reasons to Retreat

Team-building, rewarding performance, improving morale and setting strategy all are common reasons for a corporate retreat.

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"One of the first objectives in planning a corporate retreat is to identify the objective that needs to be achieved as a company," says Cynthia Mitchell, president and CEO of GEP Utah, which was named Best of State for destination management. The company has offices in Salt Lake, Sun Valley and Jackson Hole. "With the corporate economic conditions what they are today, huge bonuses, high-profile incentive trips or retreats with no planned outcome are things of the past."

One consideration is whether the retreat is intended for top executives who need to focus on the company's strategic planning, or if it's meant for overall employee morale.

The primary motivator for workers to put extra effort into their jobs is their belief that senior management has their best interests at heart, according to the 2007 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study, which surveyed nearly 90,000 workers in 18 countries. However, the study also revealed that only four out of 10 workers think this is true of their companies, and more than half think that senior management "treats us as just another part of the organization to be managed" or "as if we don't matter."

With the economic downturn, many employees are being asked to do more with less, leading to a high-stress environment. "People today in their jobs, especially in the service industries, have a high level of burnout because the clientele requires so much of them and there's so little money and so great a demand and so few staff," says Jill Carter of Salt Lakes Carter Consulting. As a result, employees end up not liking their jobs, the people they work with and the company they work for. Retreats can build camaraderie, trust and morale. "We have to take care of people in the workplace first, so that they can take care of the client and the customer," she says.

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