On the 19th of June, the entire Immediab team hopped on a train at Gare de Lyon, for the team’s annual retreat. The destination, Camargues – a natural region located South of Arles in France, was kept secret until arrival 🤫.
Between busy schedules, costs, actual work in lab, and other stuff of life happening, it was quite a challenge to pull off such an event. And yet, with collective efforts, we managed to bring together the team for a 3-day getaway of working and fun!
How We Scheduled Our Time Together
One of the big questions we tussled with while putting together the retreat schedule was how planned do we want this retreat to be?
This was an important one to consult and get advice on along the way, as there are convincing arguments to be made for both having a more free-form retreat and a very structured one. The former may encourage more serendipitous connections and the latter gives you more control over the outcome of the retreat. Both are great and work for different teams with different needs!
The schedule we eventually arrived at was quite structured, and free time was mindfully built in, too.
Work Work Work
The main “working” goal of the 2019 team retreat was to present members’ ongoing and upcoming projects.
 Newcomers – Elena, Diane, Joy and Amélie, gave a pitch talk about their background and the project they will be conducting within the Immediab lab. The tech team shared with us the latest innovations implemented in the lab. Communication strategies were also discussed: website, online visibility, team image, etc. Clinics also had its share with a discussion on new concepts in T2D research.
Time For Some Fun Now
An incredibly important element of retreats is the time we spend not working but instead getting to know one another.Â
To make this happen, we planned some ice-breaker activities such as archery, a boat ride on the Camargue river, a visit to the Camargue Gard, a great site of France’s fauna, flora and its horses and bulls of Camargue in their natural environment.
Shared meals were also a big part of our retreat because foodies is our last name 😌😋. We took advantages of these moments to get to know each other better, laugh, discuss current works and of course take tons of (silly) photos and our (more-or-less) official team event photo.Â
On to the Next One
This team getaway was the perfect occasion to learn from and about each one and take everything onto the next retreat!
There are definitely a lot of logistical challenges involved in getting all of us to one place. But there are so many more moments of joy, serendipity and learning together that make it all worthwhile.
Over to You!
Have you ever been part of or planned a work retreat for your team? Do you have any recommendations for us? We’d love to hear them!
