How we plan and design our team offsites
At the end of this month, it’s time for our third team offsite at Capacities.
As a fully remote team, these week-long events are essential for truly getting to know each other and building our team culture. I want to share some learnings from our first two offsites and give you a look into our planning process.
What is the purpose of our offsites?
Our offsites are not about making project progress or simulating office life. Instead, they are designed to fill the gaps that naturally exist in remote work and to create deeper bonds – both on a personal level and around the shared mission of our company.
It’s nothing new, but you simply get to know people better when you meet in person. On top of that, offsites are the perfect opportunity to work on big, fundamental questions and concepts. You get everyone on board, have vivid and nuanced discussions, see what others really care about, and get to the bottom of things. There’s often no space – or the right setting – for these conversations in day-to-day work.
And of course, to set the stage for all of this, we always plan fun activities and small trips.
How we plan our offsites
We aim to organize a team offsite two to three times per year. If they’re too close together, you risk spending too much time planning and traveling instead of working. After all, it’s a week where day-to-day business slows down. But if they’re too far apart, you lose rhythm and start feeling out of touch as a team. For us, the sweet spot is every four to six months.
At first, we thought three months would work well, but those months fly by, and the rhythm felt too fast.
We usually start planning about two to three months in advance, making sure accommodation and logistics are booked early. The session topics and detailed agenda are the last things we decide – there’s no point in planning them too far ahead.
How we design each offsite
Each offsite spans a full business week: we begin on Monday around noon (leaving the morning for travel) and wrap up on Friday around noon (traveling home in the afternoon). This way, everyone still keeps their weekends free, and the week feels like a compact, complete unit.
One day is reserved for a small trip to a nearby city, cultural site, or activity. Beyond being fun, these trips are great for spontaneous conversations, surprising discoveries, and sometimes even impromptu discussions about feature prioritization or hot takes on note-taking, productivity, and knowledge work.
The rest of the week is filled with sessions. We encourage team members to bring topics they care about for discussion. Some sessions are focused on the big, fundamental questions – like refining our company mission and vision – while others dive into specific upcoming projects or technical challenges. We also mix in creative sessions, like a mini hackathon or brainstorming ways to make our software “more fun.”
We even set aside time for regular work. This has unexpected benefits: you get to see how others work, communicate more dynamically, and avoid coming back to a mountain of routine tasks on Monday morning after the offsite.
That’s it
I hope this gave you an interesting insight into how we think about offsites at Capacities. I’m already super excited about our next edition later this month – and I’ll share how it goes in another post!