Summer is the perfect time to organize a “Winter Education” for the ultimate corporate team- building experience. Imagine if your yearly company retreat was a camping trip—in subzero temperatures. For one Swedish company, it is.
While the prospect of trudging through the snow might not sound like a particularly cozy corporate bonding experience, Stockholm-based Fjällräven, which makes camping equipment and hiking apparel, says it’s a great way to build their employees’ confidence in the outdoors— which also helps them excel at their jobs, and in turn, helps the company grow.
The weekend is aptly titled “Winter Education,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Every winter, the brand sends a few dozen of its Stockholm-based staff members into the forests of inland Sweden to hike, horseback ride, snowshoe or ski, and set up camp for two nights under the stars. While they hope for dry weather, they go rain or shine. Even when conditions are poor, people generally come back happy.
“The worry of being cold is probably worse than the actual risk of getting cold; I think you learn a lot from that,” says Carl Hård af Segerstad, the brand’s global events manager. Everyone also learns that their actions have consequences, he says. “I think you learn some kind of self-reliance in that, and I think that is probably the biggest outcome of this.”
An opportunity to decompress and experience team bonding
About 30 to 40 people get to go every year, so the group is always changing. People are excited about the opportunity to go and for the chance to decompress, and there’s a buzz around the office both before and after the trip each year. The team tries to organize the group so that employees get to spend time with other staff they don’t typically work with directly.
“The cohesiveness and the feeling of being a part of the group grows, of course,” Hård af Segerstad says. “I would say, both before and after, there is great energy in the office.”
Even if you’re not familiar with the name Fjällräven, you’ve most likely seen the brand around. The brand’s most recognizable product is its iconic Kånken backpack, which debuted in 1978 as an answer for Swedish school children whose book bags were causing back problems. The square design has changed little since the product was first launched, and is a testament to the brand’s commitment to timeless design that doesn’t need to be replaced every season when styles change. This year, the brand will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Expedition Down Jacket, a cold-weather piece that has endured changing times with little need for evolution.
The beginning of their corporate team-building trip
The Winter Education tradition started out informally with the brand’s founder, Åke Nordin, who launched the company in 1960 with a wooden-frame trekking backpack. Nordin often brought friends out into the wilderness, Hård af Segerstad says, and over time, his definition of “friends” expanded as the company grew. Of course, it was also natural for him to outfit those friends with his company’s gear as a way to do some informal product testing.
“It was an integrated part of his product development without being super commercial about it,” Hård af Segerstad says. That Expedition Jacket actually came out of one of these very trips, he added—Nordin spent a cold night outdoors and wanted to find a way to make his down jacket warmer. He experimented with sewing two jackets together so that the baffles overlapped, and boom, the Expedition was born.
In addition to extreme staff bonding, the Winter Education tradition also affords today’s staff members this same opportunity. For those who design the products, it’s a chance to tinker with new ideas and improve upon old designs. For those who engage with the products in a different way, it provides an opportunity to understand how their products work, who their customer is and how to connect with them.
Fjällräven now operates Classics, a handful of social trekking events across the globe, in locations including Sweden, Chilean Patagonia, South Korea, Colorado and more. Those events, which are much bigger and which anyone can purchase a ticket to (as long as you can grab one before they sell out), provide an additional opportunity for staff to bond with each other, meet customers and work toward the company mission to get the everyman outdoors. The only wintertime event the brand currently runs is the Fjällräven Polar, which is a long-distance dog sledding adventure across the Scandinavian Arctic tundra. It’s a bit harder to snag a spot on, but anyone can apply. It’s free if you win a spot through a juried social media competition.
Even though February is about as cold as it gets in Sweden, and temperatures at Winter Education destinations are often 14 degrees or colder, Hård af Segerstad says people usually jump at the opportunity to join for the adventure. Most staff members have never gone winter camping before participating, and they’re excited to leave the office a little early to hoof it into the woods on a Friday afternoon. Throughout the weekend, the students learn how to manage their body temperature so they stay comfortable and don’t overheat or sweat, which can become a safety risk. They also learn how to cook outdoors and how to manage wet gear and condensation in the tent on frigid evenings.
Ultimately, it may sound like quite an odd company retreat, but it serves the same purpose, Hård af Segerstad says.
“[This] is a little bit more on brand, I would say,” he says, comparing Winter Education to corporate functions in other industries. “Knowing your product and knowing what we expect, or what users [who] buy our products actually expose themselves to—I think that is why we do it this way.”
Get to know your team through the DiSC assessment
Having a good team can make or break a company. Recent data from Gallup estimates that just 30% of U.S. employees are engaged and enthusiastic at work. Another recent Gallup report found that disengaged employees cost the global economy $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. You do the math on what that could mean for you.
Proactive team building, either by company retreats or regular office events, is one way to foster community among your employees and facilitate growth and collaboration. Another way is to get to know yourself and your employees better through a DiSC assessment, which is sort of like a professional personality test. The name stands for the four personality profiles it assesses: dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness. The test can help identify individuals’ leadership styles and provide insight into how members of your team may work together best. It can also inform the best approach to corporate team-building activities.
Learn more about the DiSC assessment.
Photo credit: lshafiq/Shutterstock
