Death by PowerPoint: Energise Your Team Offsite with Dynamic Events Ireland

Presentations have their place at a company offsite. You might have business updates to share, plans for the year ahead, new products to introduce or speakers your team needs to hear from.

The problem starts when the agenda becomes presentation after presentation.

We see it with company offsites, kick-offs and conferences. Several speakers are scheduled back-to-back, people have been sitting for hours, lunch comes and goes, and there is still a full afternoon of slides ahead.

Eventually, people get bored and stop engaging with what is happening in the room.

Changing the design of the slides isn’t always the answer. Sometimes the agenda itself needs a change of format.

Break Up the Agenda Before It Becomes a Long Day of Listening

There is no rule that says team building has to happen at the end of an offsite once all the “important” business content is finished.

We can run an activity before the presentations begin, between sessions or later in the day. Where it goes depends on the agenda.

For some events, the activity simply gives everyone a chance to get out of their seats and do something different before returning to the next part of the programme.

That could mean heading outside for a Digital Treasure Hunt, using the grounds of your hotel or conference venue for a Venue Adventure, or choosing an indoor activity if leaving the venue doesn’t suit the schedule.

Our Digital Treasure Hunt, for example, typically runs for 60 to 120 minutes, so it can be planned as a defined part of a wider offsite rather than becoming the whole day.

There isn’t one particular activity that every presentation-heavy offsite needs. We look at the group size, venue, available time, budget and what else is happening during the day before recommending one.

Your Activity Can Also Pick Up Where the Presentations Left Off

Sometimes the client wants a complete break from the business content.

Other times, they want to use the activity to do something with what has just been presented.

We can build company-specific questions and challenges into selected activities using material supplied to us in advance. That might include information from the presentations, company values, products, internal messages or other content that matters to the event.

The activity can also be branded around the company or event theme.

This needs to be planned beforehand. If you want us to use material from your presentations, we need that content in advance so our team can prepare and test the customised elements.

Full customisation also comes at an additional cost. If your objective is simply to give everyone a break from the meeting room, an existing activity may be all you need.

What Does That Look Like in a Real Event?

One example is the induction programme we deliver for ESB each month.

After ESB finishes its morning internal presentations, we run a branded digital activity for the new employees. Some of the questions use information they heard earlier that day, alongside content based on ESB’s values, sustainability goals and internal messaging.

It’s a useful example because the presentations haven’t been removed or replaced. They still deliver the information ESB needs to cover.

The format simply changes afterwards.

That same principle can be applied to an offsite, company meeting or kick-off. The morning might contain presentations and speakers, while the next part of the agenda asks people to get up, work in teams and tackle an activity.

Customisation Doesn’t Have to Mean a Company Quiz

Using presentation content doesn’t mean simply copying facts from PowerPoint slides and turning them into multiple-choice questions.

Depending on the activity and brief, we can create challenges around company information, products, values or the themes being discussed at the event.

For FBD Hotel Group, we incorporated the company’s new core values into a Level Up activity, using the game to bring those values into the event.

We have also used our event technology as part of strategy meetings rather than treating team building as a completely separate social session. For ISS’s Journey to Great strategy meeting, we designed team tasks and challenges around workshops during the day, finishing with teams creating and presenting their own elevator pitches.

Those are different briefs, but they make the same point: the activity can sit alongside the business purpose of the day when there is a reason for it to do so.

Or Just Give People a Proper Break

Not every activity needs to carry a corporate message.

If your team has spent the morning hearing about strategy, targets, products and plans, you may decide the last thing they need is another exercise based on the same material.

In that case, choose the activity as an activity.

Get people out of the meeting room. Give them something completely different to do for an hour or two. Then move on with the rest of the event.

Any of our popular team building activities could be considered here. The right choice depends much more on the people taking part, the space available, the time in the agenda and the budget than on finding something specifically labelled as an “offsite activity”.

Look at the Whole Offsite Agenda Before Choosing the Activity

Where the activity goes matters almost as much as what you choose.

If you already have three hours of presentations planned for the morning, another seated indoor session immediately afterwards may not provide much contrast.

If the venue has suitable outdoor space, you might use it. Venue Adventure, for example, uses the grounds of your chosen hotel or conference venue, so the group can get outside without needing to travel somewhere else.

If your schedule is tight or the venue limits what you can do, an indoor activity may make more sense.

And if team building is only one part of a much larger company event, the conversation may need to go beyond the activity itself. Dynamic Events also manages complete company away days and offsites, including venues, agendas, activities and event-day logistics.

The aim is not to squeeze team building into an already packed schedule. It is to work out where a different type of session would actually improve the flow of the day.

What Should You Send Us?

You don’t need to have the activity figured out before speaking to us.

Start with the practical information:

• Your date
• Number of people attending
• Venue or location, if already booked
• Time available for the activity
• Approximate budget
• Where the presentations and other sessions sit in the agenda

If you want the activity customised around the content of the offsite, tell us that too.

We’ll also need the relevant presentations, key messages, company information or other material in advance if we are going to build them into the activity.

From there, we can recommend whether it makes sense to use an existing team building activity, customise one around your content or simply find the right activity to give everyone a change from the presentation programme.