Are away days actually helping people do anything differently?

Most of us have sat through one of these days at some point. The company away day, annual update, quarterly get-together or town hall where the senior team stand up and talk everyone through the achievements of the last year, the plan for the coming year, the key priorities, the numbers, the challenges and, usually, a few carefully chosen words about people being at the heart of everything.

And to be clear, I am not knocking them. Some are really good. People get away from the day job, see colleagues they may not see very often, hear what is happening across the business and, hopefully, leave with a bit more clarity about where things are heading. Through my work with Investors in People, I have spoken to people at every level of organisations, from senior leaders to front-line teams, and one thing comes through again and again: people do want to understand the bigger picture, but they also want to know where they fit into it.

But I do sometimes wonder whether too much energy goes into the event itself, and not enough into what people are actually meant to do with what they have just heard.

The bit that gets missed

A huge amount of effort often goes into the day. The agenda is put together, slides are refined, people are lined up to speak, activities are planned, the venue is sorted and the leadership messages are carefully thought through. Then everyone goes back to work.

The real test is not whether people liked the day. It is whether they left understanding what it means for them and their team. What should they now focus on? What needs to be done differently? What decisions need to change? What does the plan mean in the context of their actual role, customers, service users, learners, residents, members or whoever they support?

This is where I think the gap can appear. The message lands quite well in the room, but it does not always get turned into anything meaningful afterwards. The next time everyone comes together might be three months later, six months later, or even the following year. By then, the energy has dropped, the detail has faded and everyone is back dealing with whatever is most urgent that week.

Why do leaders have to be centre stage?

I understand why senior leaders front these events. They are accountable for the direction of the business. People need to hear from them. Visibility matters, especially where teams are remote, dispersed or going through change.

But we can fall into quite a predictable pattern. Leaders present. Everyone else listens. Leaders explain the vision. Everyone else is expected to understand it, feel motivated by it and then somehow translate it into action when they get back to work.

That does not make much sense when you think about it. If we want people to own the direction of the business, they need to be involved in making sense of it. Otherwise, strategy can feel like something that belongs to the senior team and is simply passed down to everyone else.

And if the people closest to the work are not part of the conversation, we risk missing some of the most useful insight in the organisation.

What if the front line had more of the stage?

Imagine if more company updates were built around the teams who are actually making the strategy happen.

I do not mean in a tokenistic way, where someone is asked to do a nervous two-minute slot because it looks inclusive. I mean properly thinking about how the people closest to the work help tell the story of the business.

What are they hearing from customers or service users? What is getting in the way? Where are teams already finding better ways of working? Where is the strategy working well, and where is it not quite landing yet? What do teams need from leaders if they are genuinely expected to deliver the plan?

These are often the conversations that make strategy feel real. They move it away from being a polished set of slides and towards something people can see in the day-to-day running of the business.

The problem is not the away day. It is the follow-through.

I do think away days and company updates have a place. Used well, they can reset focus, build connection and help people understand the bigger picture. But they should be the start of the conversation, not the whole conversation.

The issue is that the day can become the main thing. People listen, nod, maybe have a good conversation over lunch, and then return to full inboxes, busy diaries and the usual pressures. The message may have been clear in the room, but if teams are not given time to work through what it means for them, it soon becomes another update rather than something that changes how people work.

That is when people start to switch off a bit. Not because they do not care, but because they have seen the same rhythm before. Big update. Positive day. Good intentions. Back to normal.

A better way to think about company updates

If organisations want these sessions to have more impact, I think there are a few simple things worth considering.

Leadership still matters, but the role changes

This is not about leaders stepping away or becoming invisible. Senior leaders still need to set direction, give clarity and create confidence. But maybe their role at these events should be less about owning the stage and more about creating the conditions for others to contribute properly.

For me, the best company updates should leave people thinking, "I understand where we are going, I know how I contribute, and I have had a chance to think about what this means in practice."

That does not happen just because someone has delivered a good presentation. It happens when the message is taken back into teams, talked through properly, linked to real work and followed up with some discipline.

Final thought

Maybe the measure of a great away day is not whether people enjoyed the venue, liked the speakers or said the slides were good.

Maybe the better question is whether anyone is doing anything differently because of it.