from EuroBiz Magazine

May 2009

by Bill Dodson

I once gave a Danish friend a call to find out what he was up to. “I’m sitting at a repair shop in North Jiangsu province waiting for them to replace the radiator of our bus.” The friend, the general manager of the company, had planned a company retreat to Qingdao. He had invited all thirty-odd employees on the trip for a few days of team building and sight-seeing; despite the minor set-back (it seems the repair shop was able to bicycle in an exact replacement for the radiator and have the bus back on the road within a few hours), the trip was deemed an enjoyable success by all.

For many companies in China the annual company trip is as important as the annual company dinner at Chinese New Year. For many staff, the annual trip is a perquisite that makes for a wonderful way for them to grow closer to their coworkers. Westerners cannot overestimate enough the value Chinese place on their relationships with coworkers, no matter how far in the past cohorts may have worked together. I have encountered Chinese who worked together twenty and thirty years before greet each other as long lost siblings whom they trust as much as their own family or elementary schoolmates. Companies that give their staff opportunities to bond even more deeply also afford staff a greater fondness for their workplace. Fondness in the Chinese workplace translates to higher retention rates.

So, though many companies canceled their Chinese New Year company dinners to reduce costs because of the global economic downturn, it would be wise to plan some sort of retreat for key staff. Well-planned retreats can help key managers participate in the planning and goal-setting every company needs during this challenging period in world economic history. Participation will give them a sense of ownership in the development of the company’s future. Also, it will help Chinese managers allay fears for their job or for the company’s future in China. Retreats can also be re-invigorating for Chinese staff, and serve as the emotional booster that will not only help them get out of bed in the morning, but also charged up to meet the challenges of the year ahead as most companies in the world navigate turbulent conditions in their markets. Under no circumstance does a company want to create an environment in which staff feels like the next year will be a sort of death march for them all: everyday a slog, every quarter a test for survival.

Most Chinese staff prefer to stay in-country for their company retreats. China, after all, is not only geographically large, but culturally diverse. Of course, to Westerners, we may have a difficult time distinguishing between a Chinese from Xi’an and one from Guangdong; but for Chinese the cultural differences place these and other Chinese worlds apart from each other. At a company dinner I asked my small staff, “Ok, next year we have a company trip; do you want to go out of the country or stay in China.” The vote was unanimous in favor of staying in China. The reason is clear, really: most Chinese people find traveling to another country for a short period troublesome to organize for, and troublesome to find the kind of food and entertainment that helps them genuinely relax. I once asked the Western and Chinese staff of a company to that had made a company trip to Bohol, in the Filipines, how the event was for them. “Great!” exclaimed the Westerners all the Westerners. “So so,” said the Chinese unenthusiastically.

Armed with the knowledge your company does not have to leave the confines of the country to get support from local staff, it is only a matter of choosing where in China to go. I simply asked my staff – again, during a company dinner – where do you want to go? I reeled off some favorite places of mine in China, where I had either been or where I knew was popular with Chinese as a getaway. Eventually – and rather quickly – we settled on JiuZhaiGou, in Sichuan province.

With several months to prepare then, Chinese staff in charge of organizing the retreat is excited not only at the prospect and process of putting together the itinerary, but of creating a budget that saves the company money. The ability and opportunity of local staff to save money for the company is a great point of pride; they will spend hours researching on the internet, contacting people in their personal network, and pushing collective bargaining to new thresholds just to save the company a few thousand RMB. However, Western managers that have the final say-so on budgets need to make sure that air travel, hotel accommodation and team building facilitators are not so cheap as to make the managers and staff miserable. For instance, I was pleasantly surprised when I asked for comparisons of Western and Chinese hotels in Chengdu (where part of the retreat will occur) and in JiuZhaiGou that – at group rates – the prices were quite competitive. Room rates for conference facilities were nearly the same.

I’ve found it advantageous to include my Chinese financial officer during every step involved in creating the plan and budget for retreats. The Officer has insights and a sense of ownership of the plan that makes it easier to formulate and sell the trip to other staff. Financial Officers also have a better sense of the value of the trip the Western manager would like to impart offer the group if the Officer is a part of the planning; instead of just having the final budget dropped in her lap for a rubber stamp.

I’m looking forward to this year’s company trip as a platform from which my team will be able to launch into a 2010 I believe will be ripe with greater opportunity than 2009. And when we arrive in that first quarter, my team will begin the new year fully intact, eager to advance into a new China.

Copyright ©William R. Dodson, 2009