# Team Building & Retreat > "If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself" Henry Ford ### Team Building Let us start by the **definition** of "Team building". It is the **process of turning a group of individual contributing employees** into a **cohesive team**. This "process" is core to our culture and reflects on a daily basis in how we work and interact together. We don't wait for formal "team building" activities to have fun together and work as a team. It is in our DNA ! We know that work can absorb us and therefore we set fixed time slots for team building activities. Those activities span over a **good restaurant**, **fun sports** (karting, paintball, ...),have a good drink in a local bar, **attending** a **sport event** or **concert** and much more. We discuss together and choose based on the envy of everyone. We do an average three of those activities on a yearly basis. ### Bi-annual Retreats > "To go faster you must slow down." John Brunner Daily life can be noisy and prevent your mind to think big and innovate. This is why we have very flexible "[Time Off](/handbook/its-all-about-people/time-off.md)" policies on one hand but we also **take a five days off as team twice a year** (from Wednesday to Sunday). We name this time off a "retreat" and we take it in June and December in vibing European cities. This retreat has the following **objectives**: * Disconnecting from our daily projects * Brainstorming mid-term and long-term strategy of the company. * Brainstorming around new tools that could make us more productive * Internal workshops & hackatons around topics we usually cannot focus well on during the year * Introducing new partnerships * ... On top of those inspirational business objectives, we also set significant amount of time for **challenging activities** such as a long hiking, adrenaline activities and so on. Last but not least, as good foodies, we make sure to **eat deliciously** during those days. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.astrafy.io/handbook/its-all-about-people/team-building-and-retreat.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.