Choosing a company away day venue

Selecting the right location for your company’s away day can make the difference between a successful event or a disaster. Here are a few tips…

Away days can be a great time to help your team bond, drive the company in a new direction or simply celebrate your successes. But a lot of the success of the day depends on the venue.

Here are a few things to consider when booking an away day venue…

Business People Talking

Choosing the right location
Finding the perfect location is important – and can be difficult. No one wants to hold an away day in your everyday office, or even just in a community hall down the road. You want to go somewhere new and different to help offer a fresh perspective.

The first consideration is the distance from your office – or possibly offices. If you’ve got offices dotted across the country, you’ll need to find somewhere that everyone can access within a couple of hours.

Ideally, you don’t want people travelling more than two hours otherwise it’ll mean tired team members in the morning and people having to shoot off straight away, cutting the social aspect of the day short.

The location will need to be easily accessible so preferably on a main train line and within a short distance of the station.

The other option is to have people stay overnight with transport provided via buses or taxis. This could help solve any transport issues but would add to the cost.

Finally, you also need to consider what’s nearby. If people do want to spend time after the event socialising, it’d be good if there was somewhere for them to go.

Picking the perfect size
When it comes to size the venue should, at the very least, be able to accommodate everyone who is going.

But it should also have room to move and flexibility in case you want to move the tables and chairs and get your team more active.

Joking Around in a Meeting

You’ll also need more than just one big room otherwise people will have nowhere to go to chat or have a break. Remember, some people might need to do work during the day, so having an area in which they can sit and work is important.

And if your away day is taking place in the summer, it would be nice to have some outside space. No one likes to be cooped up all day on a rare sunny day.

Check its accessibility
Another big consideration is accessibility.

Ask around if any of your team has any issues or considerations. It could be something as simple as someone has broken their leg, or more complex such as impaired vision or hearing problems.

Everything from ramps in, wide doors and accessible toilets need to be taken into account.

Embrace the local area
Finally, why not embrace the areas you’re visiting. Many away day attendees will get off the train, grab a taxi to the venue and repeat the journey on the way home.

But you could set activities to get them exploring the local town or book a restaurant for lunch instead of eating in the venue.

Doing this helps to distinguish the away day from all others and can help get the creative juices flowing.

 

Posted by Sara Cano

Share this post

Tags

Blog Latest