The problem isn't the retreat. It's the lack of structure.
The Journal's argument starts from a real and well-documented trend: employees are lonelier at work than they used to be, especially post-remote-work. Retreats are still one of the best tools a company has to fix that — but only when they're built right. Too many companies treat "the retreat" itself as the fix: book a nice venue, block off two days, and leave big stretches of "free time" for people to mingle and reconnect, assuming the change of scenery will do the rest.
That's the part that falls short, and the reason is simple. Without structure, people don't spontaneously bond — they find the three coworkers they already sit near and stand in a corner with them. Same cliques, nicer carpet, better catering. What actually closes the gap isn't the venue. It's a retreat that's planned and facilitated with intention, not just scheduled.
What a kid's birthday party gets right
The Journal's fix is a useful reframe: think about why a kid's birthday party actually works. There's a host. There's a schedule. There are games with rules that anyone can join with zero social risk — you don't have to be clever or well-connected to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Nobody stands around wondering what to do or who to talk to, because the structure is doing that work for them.
Somewhere between childhood and the boardroom, we decided adults had outgrown that. We hadn't. We just started calling it "facilitation" instead of "party games" — and too many companies quietly cut it from the budget in favor of open bar and a nice view.
Our take: it's not about acting like kids. It's about lowering the cost of showing up.
We'd push the Journal's argument one step further. Structure at a retreat isn't about regression — it's about removing the social tax that unstructured time charges everyone who isn't already confident and well-networked in the room. A clear activity with clear rules means the introvert, the remote hire who's never met half the team in person, and the new manager who's still sizing up the culture don't have to improvise a personality at the mixer. Structure hands them a script. That's not childish. It's just good design.
It's also why we don't build offsites around "here's a nice room, go have fun." That's not a program — it's an unplanned retreat wearing a program's budget. Every Onyx experience is built as a deliberate arc: a welcome that sets the tone, a warm-up that lowers the stakes, a core activity built around a real objective, a debrief that turns the experience into something people actually take back to work, and a close that gives the day a shape people remember. The birthday party doesn't feel effortful to the kid attending it. Someone spent a lot of time making sure of that. The same is true for a retreat that actually moves a team forward — and that someone is usually a professional planner and facilitator, not a well-meaning ops manager doing it on the side.
The takeaway for anyone planning their next offsite
Retreats work. The ones that don't are the ones where "unstructured time" is doing double duty as the entire agenda. That's the part to fix first — not by canceling the retreat, but by bringing in the planning and facilitation that makes the time actually count.
And if a multi-day retreat isn't realistic this year — budget, calendar, or otherwise — that doesn't take the option off the table. A well-run, one-day offsite can deliver the same kind of impact: a real, laptop-free break from the inbox, a facilitator who knows how to build that same welcome-warm-up-activity-debrief arc into a single day, and an experience your team will actually remember, not just attend.
That's the thesis this Journal piece put a spotlight on, and it's the same one we've been operating on since 2005. If you're rethinking your next offsite, talk to our team — we'll build the structure so all your people have to do is show up.
Sources:
The Wall Street Journal — "Don't Kill Corporate Retreats. Make Them More Like a Kid's Birthday Party." (paywalled)