Could Everyone on Your Team Handle This Offsite?

A tech company took its 120 employees to Honduras for a weeklong bonding experience that fell apart in spectacular fashion. Eating tarantulas, army-crawling in 40°C heat, unexpected wildlife encounters (including a porcupine in a software developer's room), and a group stranded overnight on an island after missing the last flight out — it sounds more like an episode of Fort Boyard than a company offsite.

Six people who attended the trip spoke to the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on April 6. They're reportedly still working alongside each other and recalling what took place nearly a decade later — and one employee still described the retreat as "one of the most fun trips ever."

"You get really close bonds on these trips," Valory told the WSJ. "It's like the life-sustaining force of the company."

This got me thinking — what if a chaotic experience like that was actually the point? Not the tarantulas, or being stranded on an island, but the shared experience of facing something unexpected together.

Of course, every team has different boundaries. Some companies don't want skiing, snowboarding, or other activities they consider too risky. Others are perfectly happy with a few days in Lapland — a sauna, northern lights, cross-country skiing, ice skating, karaoke, and enough distance from everyday work to reconnect as humans rather than colleagues. And some clients simply tell us: "My team isn't sporty — we'd rather have cultural experiences, wine tasting, and a boat tour."

The art is finding the right balance for the people involved. Designing the right experience is genuinely an art — it means understanding your people, crafting something unique to them, and having someone lead it who knows the destination firsthand.

What's the most memorable team offsite you've been part of — and what made it stick?