‘To move forward, you must retreat’

So goes the motto of one Minnesota venue that hosts corporate retreats – and so say the companies that sponsor the gatherings

By Tom Dennis

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – But what about retreats’ cost?

That was the question posed to Briana Scearcy, chief people officer for Stoneridge Software of Barnesville, Minn. After all, Stoneridge sponsors four company-wide retreats a year, one of them involving a day and a night at a Minnesota resort. For 200 people.

That can’t be cheap. Right?

Scearcy didn’t hesitate. “Certainly, these events are not inexpensive,” she said.

“But neither is turnover, meaning losing people. And we kind of look at it in that perspective.”

Michelle Mongeon Allen, CEO of JLG Architects in Grand Forks, agreed. “We are over 100 people in about 12 locations,” Allen said.

“That means the investment in bringing people together is a big one.

“But there’s something about getting people physically together that moves the needle. So we do invest, and we do get great value; but we also make sure that we’re very clear about driving outcomes when we make that kind of investment.”

As a New York Times story described in 2016, companies nationwide are learning that corporate retreats can be “an effective way to accomplish seemingly conflicting goals: Getting people to relax and to work harder. …

“And by all accounts, the business is growing.” That’s in line with the overall growth in business travel, which the Global Business Travel Association in July described this way:

“Pending many global uncertainties, business travel spending is expected to accelerate significantly in 2018, advancing 6.1 percent, followed by roughly 7 percent growth in both 2019 and 2020.”

And it seems to be the trend in the Dakotas and western Minnesota as well, with resorts, hotels, convention centers and other businesses investing to take advantage of the change.

“We have about 300 resorts that are our members,” said Dan McElroy, executive vice president of the Minnesota Resort and Campground Association.

“And while I can’t separate out what might be called corporate retreats or planning events or sales meetings, I can tell you that corporate meetings, broadly, are extremely important.”

The main reason is seasonality, McElroy said. At resorts, family vacationers generally show up in the summer, while corporate meetings and retreats tend to get scheduled in the fall, winter and spring.

“So, a big reason why we see resorts making investments in meeting spaces, ropes courses and so on is that the corporate and association business has a much longer season that the social business.”

Watershed Moments

Among the resorts making corporate-retreat investments is Sugar Lake Lodge near Grand Rapids, Minn., the resort from whose website comes the headline to this story.

“When the current owners took over in 1993, they put a real focus on group clients and built up the resort around that,” said Chad Simons, vice president of sales.

“We’ve been very deliberate about that to get our corporate business here.”

The focus includes blending old and new, offering not only traditional resort cabins but also golf, a full marina and a main lodge with 9,000 square feet of meeting space.

“So it’s still that True North feel, but with highspeed fiber and a gigabyte of bandwidth,” Simons said.

Sugar Lake Lodge also offers signature leadership programs such as L3 – leading self, leading others and leading the business. An L3 program may start in August with a threeday facilitated session on the first of those topics. The second topic gets covered at a three-day session in October, and the third over three days in January.

“We actually have a group here today that is doing some leadership development,” Simons said in January.

“They’ve done snowshoeing and crosscountry skiing, we have a dog-sled team that will come out and give them a dog-sled tour.

“We have another saying: ‘A lot of watershed moments in a company’s history can be traced back to a retreat.’” Those are the moments the lodge hopes to inspire, he said.

SETTING FOR CORPORATE RETREATS IS COTEAU DES

IMAGE: PHOTORX MEDIA