# 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](https://docs.astrafy.io/handbook/its-all-about-people/time-off)" 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.