Remote companies can use workcations to connect employees

While sunbathing with your colleagues by a pool may not sound like the most fun way to spend a vacation, it sure beats sitting in a stodgy conference room all day, right?

HR Brew caught up with one company that is giving new meaning to the growing trend of workcations.

Chillax with your colleagues. It’s a vacation with your coworkers. A workcation could just mean working while you’re on vacation, but if the boss is planning it, a workcation could become a souped-up off-site.

Ben Aston, founder of Black & White Zebra, a media technology company, took his 40-person team for a workcation in Mexico. “We need to interact with our colleagues outside of transactional settings. That’s where a well-organized team workcation can greatly benefit,” he wrote in an article for Fast Company.

A growing trend? Companies including financial services firm Citigroup, photo editing app PhotoAiD, and software company Doist are all offering versions of this type of workcation. We personally prefer the term “offsitecation,” but nobody asked us.

Lisa Sholkin, VP of people at Teampay, an expense platform, told HR Brew about the company’s workcation and the employee response. While Sholkin oversees the HR team, she admits that the workcation is part of what enticed her to join the company a few months ago. The concept happened organically, she explained—it was an idea that CEO Andrew Hoag had as a way to connect some of the company’s remote workforce. But employees were so receptive that he decided to make it a recurring event. The company visits a different international city for a week each quarter, and all full-time employees are invited. So far, Teampay has visited Mexico City and Panama City.

Most of Teampay’s customers are in North America, so the company loosely limits what timezone team members travel to.

“We’re predominantly focused on US clients and being able to serve our customers during their working hours,” Sholkin explained. Since the success of the first trip, employees now have formalized parameters. and the company doesn’t cover the entire trip. “For example, we now have a formal $1,000 stipend that each employee is entitled to for the trip. They can apply it to hotel or airfare,” she said. They also structure the trips so employees have planned dinners and activities outside of working hours. “There’s value to employees being able to experience other cities and countries, and also being able to collaborate with colleagues that they might not see on a regular basis and in person,” Sholkin said, noting that the company also experiences increased productivity during these trips.

She said that HR managers interested in setting up these workcations should be mindful of the type of work the business does and when business happens. “That’s really the biggest hurdle we face for folks who do want to travel abroad—just making sure that they can be reachable for their teams and customers.”

And if you’re going to Vegas, just make sure no one ends up in a bathroom with a tiger.—KP