With so many people taking time off to enjoy vacations in the warmer weather, summertime is often a slower season for businesses in many industries, and agencies are no exception. As clients take a respite from their day-to-day business, meetings and calls to spend time with their families and friends, agency leaders may find their staff looking for ways to keep busy.
If your agency employees are facing downtime at work this summer, it can be the perfect opportunity to tackle some key things you may not have the capacity to focus on in busier times. Here, 15 members of Forbes Agency Council share great ideas for extra cultural perks and bonding activities that agency teams could undertake during the summer months, in particular, and why summer is the right time to do this.
Forbes Agency Council members share ideas agencies can use to make the most of a summer slowdown.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Do A Wellness Challenge
We are participating in a month-long wellness challenge that benefits our favorite charity. It’s been great, since we are a fully remote team and this is something everyone can take part in. The event has increased communication across our company and brought out the team’s competitive nature. Summer is the perfect time because people have fitness on their minds and days are longer! – Antonella Pisani, Eyeful Media
2. Hold A Company ‘Olympics’
Summer is one of our busiest times of year, but it still cries out for a great team event. Our go-to is the “Shiny Summer Olympics,” consisting of a three-part competition: miniature golf, ax throwing and cornhole. Our creative team designs shirts, which we all wear during the competition, and prizes are given out along the way and at the end. It’s a great way to have a fun and healthy competition. – Katy Thorbahn, Shiny
3. Take The Team To A Pottery-Making Class
In PR, we’re always running! Between answering emails and calls and meeting production deadlines, I could work for 24 hours straight if I was able to! Summer is the right time for team bonding activities because you’re not in the midst of a holiday rush. You have a quick moment to breathe. Recently, we were able to get our team together, and we did a pottery-making class. It was so fun and a great way to connect. – Jessica Kopach, The JKO Agency
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4. Enjoy The Great Outdoors Together
Summertime is an excellent opportunity for agency teams to help each other grow personally. This period would be a fantastic time to host an event or contest to get the whole agency together and have some fun. This could be anything from a 5K walk/run to an outdoor cookout. Use this time to enjoy the outdoors! – Jett Collins, Salty’s Media
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5. Give Employees Time Back To Spend As They Wish
The best perk you can implement in the summer, as the nights get longer and the weather hopefully improves, is giving employees time back to spend with family, friends and loved ones. Finishing an hour earlier on a Friday, not putting too much pressure on them to attend lots of social events, and if you do, encouraging families to get involved (such as by attending a team barbecue), are great ways to build deeper, more meaningful relationships between agencies and teams. – Nathan Lomax, Quickfire Digital
6. Give Teams A Chance To Give Back And Bond
We did an activity in one of our offices recently called “Sandwiches for Shelters” that was both a strong team-building activity and an important social cause. We made dozens of sandwiches in an assembly line, everyone with their own task, and our most junior team members were the project managers. As we say at our agency, “If you’ve been blessed this week, please consider an act of kindness for others.” – Bernie Malinoff, element54
7. Create A Trivia Game Led By Team Members
We do team trivia! Each week a team member poses five multiple-choice questions to the team at the end of our team call. Not only do we get to know everyone better, but we also get to reward those who get the questions right, encouraging people to get to know one another as part of the culture we’re building. The person who guesses the right answer first wins $25, so everyone has a reason to engage! – Ethan Kramer, EK Creative
8. Do Fun Team-Building Activities Outside
Summertime is always busy for us as an agency. We tend to do a team-building activity every quarter. Events that we think were a hit during warmer months include whitewater rafting, a trip to the zoo for a special activity, bike rides and outdoor games. We also have “Fantastic Fridays” in the summer for our employees so they can take Fridays off to enjoy camping or a getaway with no hit to their paid time off. – Joe Rowett, VELOX Media
9. Create An Inspiring Space For Collaboration
As a digital agency with a four-day hybrid workweek, it’s essential to bring our team together in fellowship. To liven up our downtown office, we worked with an internationally renowned muralist named Louise Jones to install a botanical mural on our building. This mural brings our team together as a collaboration space for meetings and even our annual summer cookout. – Nate Reusser, Reusser Design
10. Develop Initiatives To Boost Employee Health
We coined this the “Year of Health” for our company, with an emphasis on employee health and wellness. This summer is busy, but our teams are making time for and looking forward to purposeful initiatives rooted in our culture of teamwork. We have a companywide sports field day and our new running club—some employees are even training with each other for marathons coming up in the fall. – Violet Aldaia, H4B Chelsea
11. Gather Teams To Work Remotely Together
A lot of employees love working remotely and prefer it over having to go into an office. The downside is the difficulty this creates in maintaining the company culture. So why not take teams and work remotely together? For example, everyone can bond and work together at a beach house for a full workweek, or you could make every other Friday a nonwork day dedicated to a corporate outing. – Chuck Kim, Digital Saints
12. Treat Team Members To Daily Lunches
Summer is the best time for team bonding at agencies. Making sure everyone has an outlet for being themselves and feels appreciated is very important. Our agency treats team members to daily lunches during the summers, and we also leverage team-building days to help ensure everyone knows they are special and needed. – Seth Winterer, Digital Logic
13. Support Nonprofits By Doing Good Together
Find nonprofits you can support during the summer, and do good together. All nonprofits need extra help during the summer, such as volunteers, fundraising or even pro bono help. For years, we have bought a table at a summer beach party for a favorite nonprofit, and we use it as a casual get-together for our staff to get to know each other outside of work while also supporting a great cause. – Katie Schibler Conn, KSA Marketing
14. Host A Summer Party For Staff, Clients And Friends
We hold an annual summer party for all of our staff, as well as clients and friends in the industry. It has become a much-anticipated event (especially after missing a couple of years due to Covid). It’s a great way to bridge gaps between teams and departments that may not interact on a day-to-day basis. Rewarding and celebrating our team’s hard work and commitment to the agency boosts morale. – Kate Whelan, Notch Communications
15. Offer No-Meeting Fridays
We offer no-meeting Fridays all year round (what we call “Free Fridays”), but it’s something to try for your agency in the summer as a test run. Essentially, we don’t schedule any internal team or external client calls on Fridays, giving our people uninterrupted time to finish their work for the week and the freedom to wrap up their Friday whenever they’re done. It’s been very well-received. – Lindsey Groepper, BLASTmedia
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
