Holding an in-person company retreat is a quick way to get your team to connect and have fun. However, as more and more companies go fully remote, knowing how to plan distributed team-building events is becoming a necessity.
But this may be new to most people, and there may be limited resources to help you out, so how exactly can you plan for and execute an engaging virtual retreat for your virtual teams? What are some goals you can achieve and some benefits of virtual retreats?
As the Head of Culture & Collaboration at MURAL and a remote work coach, Laïla von Alvensleben had the opportunity to plan and execute MURAL’s very first virtual retreat back in 2020. The 3-hour-long virtual retreat helped the global remote company strengthen employee connections and build a collective memory that showcases MURAL’s company values.
We recently chatted with Laïla to learn more about how MURAL organized and implemented MURAL’s first-ever virtual retreat — as well as the positive results!
In this article, you’ll learn about:
- MURAL’s goals for virtual retreats
- How MURAL made the virtual experience immersive
- How the virtual retreat achieved more than what was envisioned
- How the virtual retreat strengthened the company’s core values
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MURAL’s Goals For Virtual Retreats
As MURAL successfully secured their $118M series B funding, MURAL wanted to make sure that, even in a fully remote working environment, all members of the company could get together to celebrate the win. The company was in high spirits, but the teams weren’t able to get together to connect and celebrate in person.
To ensure everyone at MURAL felt like the win belonged to every single one of them, Laïla was tasked with the challenge of planning a virtual retreat. While Laïla didn’t have too much time to prepare, she said the goal, to her, was rather simple:
We wanted to celebrate the company-wide success in getting our series B funding, but we also really wanted to make sure that the celebration would help people connect. It’s easy to forget how important it is to connect with people. We knew we wanted people to connect, to get to know others that they may have never met before. And we wanted them to have fun.
While celebrating, connecting, and having fun sound simple on the surface, helping a company maintain a healthy and connected culture can be difficult. Not to mention doing so for a fully remote company!
While it’s not easy — and one single virtual retreat definitely does not capture all the work Laïla does as the Head of Culture & Collaboration— the virtual retreat serves as an example and encouragement to all remote companies that it is possible to create a thriving company culture with intentionality and some creativity.
Read More: How to Integrate Freelance Software Developers Into Your Current Team
How MURAL Made The Virtual Experience Immersive
While MURAL has been a remote company for a while now, before the pandemic hit, MURAL held physical retreats. For instance, in 2019, MURAL hosted a retreat in Argentina that was over a week long. The logistics included figuring out flights, accommodations, in-person workshops, and team-building activities for 120 people.
This time around, MURAL had to get creative with the reunion. Laïla’s challenge was to plan a three-hour-long virtual retreat that would be just as meaningful, if not more, as the one in Argentina. But instead of having three months to plan, Laïla only had two weeks. She passionately said:
We didn’t want people to just show up, do an icebreaker, do a workshop, and participate in activities. We wanted it to be a journey from A to Z.
The virtual retreat had to be a fully immersive experience
After brainstorming with a group of volunteers, MURAL landed on the idea of building a virtual world tour, where the company put 250 employees on a virtual airline to different destinations around the world. To avoid stereotyping, instead of picking specific cities to travel to, MURAL picked geographical environments, such as rainforests, snowy mountains, tropical beaches, and even outer space, for employees to travel to! Laïla and some volunteers from MURAL created detailed itineraries for different teams and even asked employees to pack their bags for the places they were going to.
The flight experience included sound effects of the aircraft taking off, volunteers acting as flight attendants, and even boarding passes and virtual passports that MURAL sent out to employees! On top of that, Laïla organized for physical items to be delivered to the employees ahead of time:
And so for the beach, for example, we had sent over sunscreen and a USB portable fan. The idea was that you would… smell sunscreen. And it kind of brings memories of summer just by smelling it. So we wanted to use the senses. And the USB fan was to create that kind of breeze that you might have at a beach.
Those who were going to outer space? They got “some fun food astronaut packages from Amazon”!
The day before their trips, the employees packed these physical items into their travel bags for their destination. Once the event started, the team essentially flew in the same vehicle via Zoom’s background feature.
The keys that allowed MURAL to truly create an immersive virtual retreat were that they:
- Incorporated physical items,
- Utilized technologies to make the virtual real, and
- Planned an itinerary that was exciting and innovative
Read More: How to Create a Remote Work Culture That’s Supportive, Positive & Fun
How The Virtual Retreat Achieved More Than What Was Envisioned
Fun was the goal
When Laïla was planning the virtual retreat, the leadership team didn’t set up any particular goals so there was no quantitative way to measure the success of the virtual retreat.
We didn’t spend too much time overthinking, like what’s going to make it successful. We knew that we wanted people to connect, to get to know others that they had never met before. And we wanted them to have fun.
However, the feedback Laïla received and the results achieved spoke for the success of the unique online event.
[The team] were kind of expecting to take a seat back and just, you know, maybe be disengaged. And there was no time for that really, because in three hours we just kept surprising them with more and more things.
A new experience for everyone
Against people’s unsure expectations, the event ended up blowing people’s minds as it was something most people had never experienced before. What really caught people’s attention were:
- The stories that were created,
- The attention to detail, and
- The extraordinary acting of the flight attendants.
They even integrated some localization, taking into account where their team were based:
Two teammates who were flight attendants [were] doing all the announcements in English and in Spanish because we have a lot of people in Argentina.
If the goal was to help people connect over a shared experience, the virtual retreat definitely achieved that—even today, people at MURAL are still making inside jokes about the experience. Someone even said that it was the best moment in 2020 at MURAL after Laïla shared a case study of the retreat.
Reimagining the product
One of the biggest wins of the day: the virtual experience helped people reimagine MURAL and made everyone feel more passionate about the product.
Laïla divided people up into groups and had them go through virtual escape rooms that utilized MURAL’s own product. With the help of other volunteers, MURAL designed sophisticated escape rooms that involved using MURAL’s features. To make it through the escape rooms, the groups had to use MURAL’s feature to find a clue. Once the clue word was found, they had to put it in a URL that then took them to the next level.
As someone with a background in design, Laïla knows how attractive and engaging visuals can be. As MURAL is all about collaborating effectively, ideating, and planning visually, Laïla incorporated MURAL’s online canvas and whiteboards throughout the virtual retreat. In Laïla’s words:
Even product designers who knew the product well were surprised by how the features they had designed could be used in such flexible and creative ways.
On a day-to-day basis, product managers, designers, and engineers may be consumed by what features to prioritize to develop better pricing strategies, how to iterate existing product flows to make the product more accessible, and how to solve bottlenecks and generate POCs. Employees may be so consumed by goal-driven objectives that they may not get a chance to think out of the box and see the product from a different perspective. The virtual retreat gave them an opportunity to do that.
As Laïla said, this made the entire team reimagine the product:
They would’ve never thought to use our features to get out of an escape room.
So was the whole experience worthwhile for the MURAL team?
Overall, it was very successful, and it was something that had never really been done before at MURAL… People [were] saying, “You know, I met people I normally would never work with or bump into because we’re not in the same teams,” and that stayed with them. And then I think overall, it just gave this huge boost of positive energy and fun and playfulness that I think we all really needed.
Read More: 25+ Best Tech Gifts for Programmers, Software Developers & Engineers
How The Virtual Retreat Strengthened The Company’s Core Values
MURAL has five core values:
- Make others successful
- Adapt to thrive
- Play to wow
- Think global
- Experiment like an owner
The most obvious value that the virtual retreat showcased was “think global.”
Think global: With employees located all across the globe, “think global” is not only reflected in MURAL’s hiring practices but very much so in the virtual retreat Laïla headed up. Not only were physical items shipped to employees located all around the world, the “virtual world tour” theme itself explored the theme of globalness. Laïla explained what think global means for MURAL concisely:
“Think global” refers to not only how we think about each other as a team internally, but also how we think about our customers globally.
Beyond “think global,” MURAL’s first-ever virtual retreat really captured all of MURAL’s other core values:
Make others successful: Going through escape rooms in a group meant that team members had to work together, utilize their individual strengths, and help each other so they can successfully make their way out of the maze.
‘Make others successful’ really explains how people at MURAL are very supportive of each other and very helpful, trying to make sure that everyone has what they need to be successful in their role, regardless of whether they’re on your team or not.
Adapt to thrive: While COVID-19 made it impossible for everyone at MURAL to get together physically, the company did not give up on making sure that everyone could stay connected, celebrate, and create meaningful memories together. The virtual retreat was an adaptation that demonstrates MURAL commitment to thriving, no matter what.
I think this year we’ve definitely seen ‘adapt to thrive.’ Obviously with COVID and the way that we’re growing so fast, ‘adapt to thrive’ is one that’s very relevant this year.
Play to wow: Yes, Laïla only had two weeks to plan the virtual retreat, but did she wow the whole company? Absolutely. MURAL says “every customer we meet is an opportunity to raise the bar and create a unique, delightful moment.” As MURAL employees are all internal users from a user experience perspective, Laïla definitely followed the company’s own motto and delivered a unique and delightful experience.
Experiment like an owner: The whole virtual retreat was an experiment. While it was an amazing experience for all, Laïla recognizes it wasn’t perfect and that there’s always room for improvement. As MURAL says, “we start small and then build based on feedback.”
We’ll leave you with a final quote from Laïla herself:
You don’t have to have everything figured out at once, but you should always be working on them. You’re always trying to get feedback from the team, always communicating, and it’s an ongoing process that will allow you to continue to improve.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Laïla!
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