Follow Up Boss has been a remote company since day one, so getting our employees together in-person has always been essential for brainstorming, collaboration, and having a little fun.
Before the pandemic, our company-wide meetups would happen once a year. But like most in-person events the last couple of years, our annual retreat was put on pause…until now.
Just a few weeks ago, the entire Follow Up Boss team met up in Austin, Texas for our first meetup since 2019. Needless to say, it was pretty dang exciting talking about all the new features and ideas that week plus meeting our co-workers–and for most of us, for the very first time!
We asked Beth Hogan, Head of People at Follow Up Boss, and Casey Blanchette-Phillips, Operations Manager at Follow Up Boss, for a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like planning our 2022 company-wide meetup.
A: As a 100% remote company, it’s important to provide in-person retreats and gatherings to connect on common goals, prevent a siloed work culture, and boost overall morale.
A: One of the most challenging parts was the short planning period this year. We only had about 3 months to pull everything together.
Developing the retreat content and agenda can also be tricky. Ensuring that we provide captivating material to staff and making sure our customers were taken care of while all staff were on-site. Each of those components took a lot of effort and collaboration to prepare.
Toss in a pandemic and doubling the size of our team… we are pretty impressed with how it all came together!
A: Our team’s support and willingness to hop in on anything and everything we needed was a huge help. We also hired a company called Flok to assist with event coordination onsite which really benefited us. Flok helped with a majority of logistics in terms of scheduling transportation, team building activities, retreat meals etc.—the process would not have been as smooth without them.
A: The itinerary was carefully planned and executed with good care. It went through a few variations and stages but ultimately the days were strategically planned to provide a healthy mix of company-focused sessions, all hands-on deck support power hours, and fun group activities and evening festivities to reward our team for their hard work.
This is a guesstimate but about 70% of the day was spent on working 30% on team activities and leisure time.
.png)
A: We talked through a bunch of destinations and all the ones we chose were within a 1-hour driving distance to major airports for any and all international folks joining us. Ultimately we landed on Austin as it fit the bill for location and activities.
A: FUB to the Future!
A: As a group we wanted to focus on the future of Follow Up Boss without forgetting where we came from. The idea was brought up on one of our retreat planning calls that that theme could be “FUB to the Future”. We all agreed and jumped right on into that.
A: Top five tips would be:
%20(1)%20(1).png)
