Your current proposal is two trips per year. My idea was 6,or 4 extra trips. If it's $700/pp and you have 5 people, that's $3500/trip. So, my recommendation adds an extra $14K to your yearly budget.
However, staying some place for a week vs. a month should cut the hotel bills and food/meal/bar bills by 75%. You reference $200/day for food/bar. Two month-long trips is 60 days of this expense. 6 week-long trips is 42 days of this expense, or an 18 days savings, or a $3600 net savings. Factor that against the $14K increased flight cost and you're adding $10K/year, or $830/month increase. Based on the way you presented the finance details, this still doesn't seem like a big factor, and could potentially remove a lot of stress from employees personal lives if they don't have to be gone for month-long stretches. Of course, if your employees LIKE a big break from their family, then this may not add any value for them :)
You may have a point on 4 trips per year being better than 2 trips. Two weeks will certainly be more interesting, but I'm afraid that the amount of productivity may not be quite as high. If the trip is too exciting, it will drop productivity, but if people have time to get used their surrounding, they will settle down and start working.
Well, in reality if you have to keep bringing people together for a month at a time to an exotic place, you have a larger problem looming.
Assuming you have decent people and an engaging goal in the company, then these jaunts should really be more about strategizing and prototyping vs. doing "actual" work.
I would consider these more like regular "Demo Days" and brainstorm sessions. My personal bet would be that higher-frequency, shorter duration meetings would allow every one to come together, collaborate, get inspired, and then go off on an 8 week productivity binge. These little trips SHOULD be mini vacations for the team.
The more I think about this, I almost think you're doing it backwards. You'll get 2 months of high-productivity work (the 2 months the team is all together under your plan) and another month of mid-productivity work (the first 2 weeks of the next month after each trip) and then (IMO) a steady taper of productivity back toward zero until the next month-long getaway.
I think these meetings can serve to add momentum to your org. Keeping an object in constant, regular motion is usually more sustainable if the object gets a "shove" at more frequent intervals.
Comments
Your current proposal is two trips per year. My idea was 6,or 4 extra trips. If it's $700/pp and you have 5 people, that's $3500/trip. So, my recommendation adds an extra $14K to your yearly budget.
However, staying some place for a week vs. a month should cut the hotel bills and food/meal/bar bills by 75%. You reference $200/day for food/bar. Two month-long trips is 60 days of this expense. 6 week-long trips is 42 days of this expense, or an 18 days savings, or a $3600 net savings. Factor that against the $14K increased flight cost and you're adding $10K/year, or $830/month increase. Based on the way you presented the finance details, this still doesn't seem like a big factor, and could potentially remove a lot of stress from employees personal lives if they don't have to be gone for month-long stretches. Of course, if your employees LIKE a big break from their family, then this may not add any value for them :)
You may have a point on 4 trips per year being better than 2 trips. Two weeks will certainly be more interesting, but I'm afraid that the amount of productivity may not be quite as high. If the trip is too exciting, it will drop productivity, but if people have time to get used their surrounding, they will settle down and start working.
Well, in reality if you have to keep bringing people together for a month at a time to an exotic place, you have a larger problem looming.
Assuming you have decent people and an engaging goal in the company, then these jaunts should really be more about strategizing and prototyping vs. doing "actual" work.
I would consider these more like regular "Demo Days" and brainstorm sessions. My personal bet would be that higher-frequency, shorter duration meetings would allow every one to come together, collaborate, get inspired, and then go off on an 8 week productivity binge. These little trips SHOULD be mini vacations for the team.
The more I think about this, I almost think you're doing it backwards. You'll get 2 months of high-productivity work (the 2 months the team is all together under your plan) and another month of mid-productivity work (the first 2 weeks of the next month after each trip) and then (IMO) a steady taper of productivity back toward zero until the next month-long getaway.
I think these meetings can serve to add momentum to your org. Keeping an object in constant, regular motion is usually more sustainable if the object gets a "shove" at more frequent intervals.