You have two goals when you’re planning in-person gatherings:

1) to strengthen team culture
2) to have real ROI attached

And there’s a way to get both done at the same time.

Susannah Banks, Chief of Staff at RevenueCat, has spent years planning team gatherings and user conferences. In today’s edition of The Gathering Ground, she’s created a strategic framework for transforming big events from expensive burden to revenue AND culture-driving success.

Introducing the PAPER Framework

The way things are done now, companies think of events as a social moment, not a business investment. That mindset leads to a missed opportunity.

When you get everyone together, you can get some high-impact work done. Banks developed the PAPER framework to make sure in-person gatherings benefit both employees and the entire company. Here’s a peek:

P - Purpose-Driven Planning

Do more than check a “plan gathering” box. Tie your planning to your organizational identity. A venue can be a brand manifestation! The environment that you put everyone in shapes the narrative of your company culture.

A - Adaptation Throughout

Some of the best business moments aren’t line items on an agenda. Real-time, in-person communication is important, and your planning should let those moments happen.

P - Prioritizing Your People

Forget about travel logistics and focus on what you’re facilitating: smart, hands-on, all-in collaboration. Team gathering budgets that go the furthest for you are the ones that promote human connection, not the ones that are hyper-focused on minimizing costs.

E - Emergent Collaboration

If you create opportunities for teams that are usually siloed to work together, they can unlock all kinds of new collaborative ideas.

R - Resonant Mission Alignment

When everyone’s in one place, it’s a great time (and way) to remind them about the organization’s biggest goals. It’s about more than just the mission statements – it’s actual, tangible objectives.

When your staff tackles big-picture tasks together, instead of just talking about the issues, their alignment reaches new heights.

Learn more about how Banks put the PAPER framework into action.

Product Features Worth Toasting

Just a few of our top product features and new releases from the past year.

Make it personal: Want to let your guests extend their work trips to include personal time – without having to make dozens of manual changes? They can now book, pay for, and manage personal nights within the group trip, keeping the group rate and saving you from fielding endless ad hoc requests.

Approve guest changes in bulk: If you’ve ever run a room block, you get it. As your event gets closer, guest requests spike: new dates, new cards, cancellations, etc. And now you can handle every outstanding guest request in one quick workflow: just approve, deny, or skip and save yourself hours.

Meeting space booking upgrades: We’ve brought together the menus, floor plans, images, 3D walkthroughs, and more so you have total visibility into your meeting space’s capabilities and specifics. That includes prices, pacing against minimums, F&B choices, A/V, and more for each day and time.

RFP top hotels worldwide: Easily search and build an RFP to get group rates from any 3+ star hotel in any destination around the world.

Retail rate comparison: In our dashboard, you can now see how much you saved with your group rate vs. if you booked outright. It’s the best way to optimize your budget confidently.

Export hotel room block proposals: We love Excel just as much as you do. Now you can export all your proposals to a CSV file, making it easier to review them and to share with key decision makers.

Alternative dates: What if your RFPs are for a busy weekend, and you’d be better off budget-wise waiting a week? Our alternative dates function lets you submit other potential trip times to see the difference in costs or access hotels that aren’t available for your primary dates.

Onward!

Here’s to another year of successful gatherings.

As you meet up with your team in 2026, we hope we can work together to make the planning easier and make your gatherings even more successful. 

To see Workgrounds’ platform in action, book time with our founder.