Survey: For Employees, Offsites Valuable but Can be Costly

Most employees see benefits from corporate offsite meetings but they also can be a personal financial burden, particularly among younger employees, according to an Emburse survey of 2,000 U.S. employees who had attended an offsite in the past year.

In the survey, conducted by Talker Research from Nov. 15 to Nov. 22, 85 percent of respondents said offsites made them feel more connected to their organization and its goals, and the top feeling employees said they felt for offsites was "excitement," according to Emburse. The employees said the key benefits of offsites were interacting with employees with whom they don't often interact and direct communication with company leadership.

Emburse chief financial officer Adriana Carpenter said the survey indicates an increase in offsites, with companies having them more frequently and moving them out of corporate settings to such venues as resorts and restaurants.

"It's to enable those employees to have that broader connection and envelop relationships that aren't just business related," Carpenter said. "It's not really surprising, if you think about how disconnected we've become because of the expansion of remote work, that need and that desire for employees to want to have a connect is coming through in these survey results."

At the same time, a solid majority of younger employees—77 percent of Gen Z respondents and 70 percent of Millennial respondents—said attending offsites had "some" or "a major" impact on their personal finances, according to the survey. That could include paying for incidentals during travel that weren't covered by the company, having to buy meeting-appropriate clothing or covering expenses such as childcare or pet care during their absence, Carpenter said.

The impact also came from payment policies, with 29 percent of respondents saying they had to pay out of pocket and submit for reimbursement for offsite expenses. Only a quarter of respondents said they used a physical or virtual corporate card for expenses, and 46 percent said their expenses were managed by someone else in their organization—in which cases, they might be covering lodging and airfare but not all incidental expenses incurred during travel, according to Carpenter.

"If this is how the workforce is thinking about business travel, what should companies be doing to harness the value of having these offsites without any kind of negative feedback?" she said. "This is where you really want to lean into having really great expense and travel policies that will enable these corporate gatherings without sacrificing any of the goodwill you get from it."

The perceived financial impact was lower among older employees, with 54 percent of Gen X respondents saying offsites affected their personal finances and 62 percent of Baby Boomers saying the meetings had no impact on their personal finances.

The survey also showed a continuing trend of travelers wanting to add leisure elements to their travel, with half of respondents saying they added personal travel time or vacation either before or after the meeting. Gen Z employees were the most likely to add personal time, with 60 percent saying they had done so, while only 31 percent of Baby Boomers added personal travel to their offsite trip, Carpenter said.