Are company retreats and offsites worth it? The honest business case for distributed teams

The short answer

Yes, company retreats and offsites are worth it for distributed teams, if you design them around an outcome you already measure. Team connection rises by an average of 27% after an in-person gathering and drifts back to where it was about four months later (Atlassian's own research). Teams in the top quartile of engagement see 21% lower turnover than the bottom quartile in organisations where turnover is high, and 51% lower where it is already low (Gallup's meta-analysis of 183,806 business units). And losing someone is expensive: Gallup estimates that replacing a professional in a technical role costs 80% of their salary, a leader or manager around 200%, and a frontline employee 40% (Gallup). If you want that argument with your own team in it, our ROI calculator does the arithmetic in about three minutes.

That "if" is carrying real weight, though. The harder question is why so many offsites leave nothing behind.

The two organisers

Two real buyers told us, in almost the same words, that they could not wait for their own offsite to be over and would never run one again. The trip itself was fine. The problem was that everything landed on one person's desk, on top of their actual job, and they never got to be a participant at their own event.

That work never shows up in a budget line. It is carried by someone whose job is something else, on top of everything they already do. Every competitor of ours can quote the same studies we just did. Nobody else sat across from those two organisers.

The quieter failure

The more common failure is quieter. The team comes home with a good feeling, nobody agreed beforehand what the trip was for, and when the CFO asks what came of it, there is no answer. That is how next year's budget dies.

Emburse's State of Corporate Offsites 2025, a vendor survey of 2,000 US full-time employees who had all attended an offsite in the past year, shows the gap from another angle. At companies beating their financial targets, 90% of employees say offsites strengthened their connection to the company. At underperforming companies, 71% do. A survey cannot tell you which causes which. What we see in our own work is that the difference sits in design: an outcome chosen upfront, and the logistics carried by someone whose actual job it is.

What the research says, and what it cannot tell you

The market itself has stopped debating the question. In the same Emburse survey, the share of companies running no offsites at all fell from 16% to 4% since 2019, and 59% have raised their offsite budgets over the same period.

The research behind that shift is consistent. In a laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries, groups meeting in person produced more creative ideas than groups meeting over video, while the video groups were no worse at choosing which idea to pursue (Nature). When Microsoft's US workforce went fully remote in 2020, a study of 61,182 of its employees found that their collaboration networks became more static and siloed, with fewer bridges between different parts of the company (Nature Human Behaviour). And the connection boost from meeting fades over roughly four months (Atlassian, above).

The numbers above are averages across thousands of companies. Your case does not run on averages. A twelve-person team with low turnover and a twenty-person team losing three people a year are looking at completely different arithmetic, and the same budget means something different to each of them.

One more honest note: much of the published research on this is American. The pattern holds in the European teams we work with, but we say that as an observation, not a statistic.

The one-line business case

One prevented departure covers a large share of an offsite budget. Start there. Pick one outcome per offsite, and agree upfront how you will check it three months later.

We built the full evidence base into our calculator, with every source and every assumption listed. It prices a departure at Gallup's figure for a professional in a technical role, not the higher one for leaders and managers. A number you can defend beats a number that impresses.

The three objections you will have to answer

If you are the one proposing the offsite, these are coming. Better to walk in with the answers.

"It looks like a holiday from the outside." The founders of Uncut wrote about their own retreat: "it's easy to balk at the price of what can look from the outside like a vacation". Their answer was to give the trip three explicit goals and report on them afterwards. That is the whole defence: an offsite with a stated outcome is a working instrument, and one without is, honestly, a holiday.

"We'll lose a productive week." True, and worth conceding. Buffer's founder and CEO, Joel Gascoigne, wrote after their eighth retreat that their retreats "serve less of a purpose of immediate productivity, and are more geared towards long-term productivity and meaningful connectedness of the team". Without those regular gatherings, he added, "we would be less effective and feel less connected". The honest trade is one slower week for a better connected rest of the year.

"We can do it cheaper ourselves." Cheaper on the invoice, yes. The planning hours land on someone's desk either way, the programme is designed by nobody, and when something goes wrong with a trip you booked yourself, there is nothing behind it. Bonded travel guarantees are the part of the calculation nobody runs until they need it.

As Zapier co-founder Wade Foster put it: "Retreats aren't cheap, but what's even more expensive is having a remote team that doesn't work well together."

How often should distributed teams meet in person?

The connection boost fades over roughly four months, which points to about three intentional gatherings a year. Fewer, and each one carries too much weight. The market average lands in the same place: companies in Emburse's 2025 survey run 2.6 offsites a year.

Two ways to take this further

Run the numbers yourself: calculate your offsite ROI in about three minutes, with your own team size and salaries instead of industry averages. You get a full report you can forward straight to whoever owns the budget, with every source and assumption listed.

Or, if you are not ready for a spreadsheet conversation yet, book a 30-minute call with us to decide what your team should measure in the first place. No pitch, just the measurement question.

FAQ

Are team retreats productive?

Yes, for the work that suffers most over video: idea generation, strategy, and the relationships that make the rest of the year smoother. Pick one outcome per retreat, so that afterwards you can check whether it delivered.

How do you measure the ROI of a team offsite?

Pick the outcome before you book anything, then price what changes: people who stay, hours that stop disappearing into planning, work that moves faster between teams. Use conservative, sourced assumptions so the number survives scrutiny. That is exactly what our calculator does with your own team size and salaries, and it shows every source it uses.

What is the ROI of team building?

It depends on your team, so be careful with any single percentage you see quoted. Two figures do most of the work. Teams in the top quartile of engagement have 21% to 51% lower turnover than the bottom quartile, depending on how high turnover already is, and each departure costs between 40% and around 200% of a salary, depending on the role (both from Gallup, linked above). The core of the case is how many people you might otherwise lose, and what each of them costs. Our calculator works that out from your own team size and salaries.

What should we measure afterwards?

Start from the outcome you picked before you left. Our Four Powers of IRL framework asks the harder question: what actually changed because people were in the same place? Four lenses, and you pick the ones that match what your team is working towards. Execution: systems redesigned, processes mapped, hours in flow. Speed: decision velocity, time to hire, time to solve client problems. Leverage: ownership, talent density, knowledge distribution, and the cross-silo relationships work runs on. Impact: retention and NPS, revenue and savings from innovation, decision quality. Set the review moment before you leave: measuring with intention starts ahead of time, not after.

How long should a company offsite be?

Three to five days is the sweet spot. Long enough for people to drop the work armour and have the conversations that never happen on a call, short enough to stay intentional. A single day near the office resets very little for a distributed team; immersion over days is what builds the relationships the rest of the year runs on.

What is the difference between an offsite and a team retreat?

A team retreat is usually smaller and more focused: one team or leadership group, going deep on culture, trust or strategy. A company offsite brings the whole organisation together to align on direction, celebrate and reconnect across teams. The difference is scope, scale and purpose; the design discipline is the same for both.