Productive retreats for remote teams

Hosting retreats for distributed teams is our bread and butter

What is the purpose of a retreat for a remote team?

Remote companies are on the rise. For the common daily tasks, you don’t always need to meet your colleagues face-to-face. Yet, sometimes the more complicated projects require being able to meet your workmates in person. At most, remotes teams tend to get together two times a year at one spot and spent around 4-7 days together. They do it for the following reasons:

To focus on work that is difficult to do remotely
To improve processes and products by participating in brainstorming sessions
To get to know each other outside working hours, especially for the people that have never met
To understand common values, as people working in remote companies are generally more diverse

Sample agenda for a remote team retreat

Surf Office had the opportunity to host the remote company Mattermost:

The Mattermost team spent one week in Lisbon
They broke the normal lunchtime routine and took time to enjoy the local fresh fish, seafood and steaks
Their mornings began with brainstorming sessions for new projects and they continued to develop ideas in the afternoon
The team members were free to explore Lisbon’s historic urban landscape after work
One afternoon and the whole day on a Saturday was reserved for a trip

Organize your next team retreat with Surf Office

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Team building activities for remote employees

Unlike colleagues that sit in the same office, remote teams mostly communicate using chats and calls and don’t have the opportunity to meet each other in person every work-day. Moreover, remote workers are often introverts, which can create a different set of challenges in designing the right team building activities.

We have summarized our findings and listed the best activities for remote teams here for you to browse. However, you can also browse our selection of group activities by location down below!

Team building in Lisbon

Team building in Ericeira

Team building Gran Canaria

Team building in Valencia

Team building in Barcelona

Team building in Prague

Team building Santa Cruz

Team building in Catskills

Organize your next team retreat with Surf Office

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Off-site package

Included in the package:

Private office
Accommodation
Dedicated pre-arrival Retreat Planner
Customized schedule with activities
Meal reservations
Online concierge service

It was great welcoming @InVisionApp for their second company retreat with us, this time at our brand new Lisbon beach location! pic.twitter.com/omTO7DwKpT
— Surf Office (@surfoffice) July 26, 2017

Our 7th time hosting @automattic, the geniuses behind @WordPress, for a company retreat. It's a fact – Lisbon makes you smile! pic.twitter.com/jJysZCRcu3
— Surf Office (@surfoffice) July 24, 2017

Why Surf Office?

 Saving time and money
Why spend time organising a retreat when you can instead manage a team or write code?

 Removing risk
100% secure and backed up internet + a professional and timely workspace.

 Domain expertise
Through organizing hundreds of retreats we know exactly what you expect and desire.

Let us help you with your team retreat

Spend a couple of days with your remote team in one of our retreat locations and work from a functioning private workspace with fast internet, whiteboards, post-its, and a projector.

Accommodation? Meal reservations? Team-building activities?
You don’t have to think about any of these arrangements. We’ll take care of it all so that you can focus on what matters – working with your team, analyzing your business, and preparing the roadmap for the coming months.

Case studies

Invision’s beach meetings in beautiful Ericeira

With coworkers located around the world, Invision flew their team
to the beautiful coastal fishing village of Ericeira, to come together,
hack on ideas and boost team morale while enjoying some
stand up paddle surfing and incredible seafood meals.

 Continue to the case study

A 5-day retreat in Lisbon captured into one epic video

Close.io is a fully remote company that takes bi-annual retreats to spend a week together, working and getting to know each other, and they chose Lisbon as their last retreat destination.

 Continue to the case study

How this workaway turned out to be a generator of 12 product features

Mynd gathered 32 developers, product people, and business-people in Barcelona.
Over 10 days, their goal was to run a hackathon, develop 12 new product ideas,
and have plenty of fun via various team building activities.

Mynd gathered 32 developers, product people, and business-people for their remote team retreat with team-building in Barcelona.

 Continue to the case study

Mattermost’s innovative design retreat comes together in Lisbon

Learn more about Mattermost’s hackathon process and
all of the great innovation that came out of their retreat.

 Continue to the case study

Little extras

 We can help you to find an optimal location

As people are travelling from all over the places, we know how important is for you to find an optimal retreat location which will minimise the time for your team members.

No matter how spread out around the globe you are, we’ll find the best location for you all to meet.

 Flexible check-in

We understand the traditional hospitality check-in after 2 pm is not convenient for a distributed team coming in from all over the globe. We’ll have someone at the workspace at all times to receive guests and check you into the accommodation as early as possible.

 Organization of a local meetup

Organizing a local meetup: Be it for hiring or networking purposes, we have a strong local community of tech people and remote workers in most Surf Office locations and can easily put together a meetup like the one for a previous Automattic group in Lisbon.

Super stoked to be hosting @automattic on yet another retreat here in Lisbon. Here they are in action during a meetup about "work" 📍@beta_i pic.twitter.com/CQUVyOYCsX
— Surf Office (@surfoffice) July 12, 2017

“Amazing experience! For a fully remote company with 500+ employees, it’s sometimes hard to organize off-sites where we all need to fly in from different parts of the world. But Surf Office made it a lot easier for us. With a great location in Portugal, we decided to bring around 20 folks together to experience a productive week while enjoying the change of environment and amazing Portuguese ocean views.”

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Tomy Jasovsky, Product Designer at Invision