Onyx’s Rise Through Corporate’s “New Normal” – A Year in Review

When the COVID-19 pandemic began more than two years ago, the corporate landscape as we knew it shifted drastically. The ‘Great Resignation’ took hold of the nation and people exited the workforce in mass amounts. Nearly 4 million people left their jobs in San Diego alone. Businesses were left to face new challenges in employee retention, including how to attract talent and keep employees happy, and it was clear that traditional forms of management, training and daily operations would no longer cut it.

Fast forward to May of 2021, and Onyx Offsites & Trainings was born. Our team took a look at the state of the modern workforce and knew that a revolutionary approach needed to be taken to teambuilding, prioritization of wellness and training opportunities. We are so proud to now be celebrating one year of helping companies achieve happier cultures and closer connections, changing their perceptions of team growth and training and exhausting every creative bone in our body to build the out-of-the-box events and activities that make it happen.

Our team has learned so much through our first year in action and we’ve been lucky enough to work with customers that have challenged us to overcome obstacles like distance. Creating successful virtual events is no small feat, but in the COVID landscape, it was critical to our success. We believe our work with Qualcomm is a prime example of what can be achieved virtually. With such a large organization, leadership at Qualcomm expressed that they often have trouble helping their employees feel connected and engaged, which was only exacerbated by the new work-from-home model. Our team created a program of virtual events, with activities like trivia and virtual escape rooms, pairing up specific groups that don’t often work together or may have trouble communicating. Now, Qualcomm teams continue to reach out to Onyx as they felt the program showed them what it’s really like to work together again when our world can feel so “transactional.”

Thanks to our creative models, we’ve been able to hold over 200 virtual events the last year. However, we knew we wanted to get teams together in person as often as we could, and we held 90 safe in-person events in the past year. Events like our Bike Build and Beach Olympics posed great opportunities to get teams together in outdoor, COVID-safe environments. Many of these events also allowed us to prioritize something near and dear to our team: giving back to the community.

We learned as we continued to work with different teams that we weren’t the only ones who valued giving back and this led us to build out robust CSR components to our events. This effort may be best highlighted in the work we’ve done with Unum, a company that wanted to prioritize the community in their teambuilding activities. Throughout our partnership with Unum, their team has renovated abandoned schools, installed meditation gardens, remodeled recreation centers and so much more.

Looking back on the past year of growth, we feel so lucky to have worked with so many organizations, big and small. Though the goal is always to help our customers’ teams grow, we like to think that every one of them brings us growth as well. Every team inspires us to create new events or to tweak our existing offerings to better serve the companies who come to us. Looking ahead, we can’t wait to continue promoting culture, connection and change throughout corporate’s “new normal.”

Onyx Offsites & Trainings is a corporate concierge team training company with a mission of empowering businesses to create meaningful culture, connection and change. Onyx offers team building, offsites, retreats, team training programs and more both virtually and in person. Onyx responds to a new market need that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic, helping companies impactfully connect with their teams. Its core offerings include offsites, training and development and team-building programs for in-person, hybrid and remote work modalities. Additional services include facilitating corporate social responsibility initiatives and delivering employee wellness programs. The company is headquartered in San Diego and serves clients across the globe.

Looking for even more information? Contact us today to get the conversation started about Onyx Offsites & Trainings.