It really depends on your situation and job type. If you have a spouse with a demanding job, and no local family there really isn't much flexibility.

If I need to stay late a few hours after work than normal, it requires immediate triage. If my wife has a busier than normal week, it may mean I go in later to the office or come home earlier, at a minimum we will lose sleep that week on meal prep etc.

She did a retreat while breastfeeding and it require her to come home each night so our son could eat. She went on a work trip and I flew out with her and the baby and took 2 vacation days (still breast feeding)

Tbh, a non-local retreat i.e. more than an hour drive, and either of us would skip it.

Its just not a nessisary business practice and IMO is agist.

And I think that is totally ok. Not everyone can do everything. We've had execs and individual contributors who say, "can't make it." And that is it and it is ok. And the reasons vary from person to person. But it is not agist. There are folks of every age that either can or can't make company trips for many reasons. For the trips I've been on, we get close to 90% participation.

The fact that people give a reason and that you have 90% participation shows that people feel obligated to go.

Its hard having a family and having two working parents. Offsites make it harder.

If you are going to organize one, you should understand that while they have real value, they also have a real cost for participants and their time should be treated like gold.

It’s not strictly necessary like breathing and eating, but it can be an extremely powerful time to spend time together as a functional or leadership team and really hammer things out. We do it 3 or 4 times per year for 3-4 days at a stretch. I see it as part of the job and honestly look forward to them, even though they can be grueling.

A small retreat with just a few leaders of a publicly traded company is pretty standard. 3-4 times a year is kind of excessive from a cost perspective and is probably very taxing for some members of the team.

Overall, I'm not sure if you are organizing it, but if you are, you should be very sure that all those offsites are not too taxing on your team. I'd personally be very frustrated, and I know coworkers at other publicly traded companies I have worked for complain about offsites, but not to their managers.

i.e. you think they are helpful but secretly your team or coworkers are very unhappy.

Ours is one 2.5 day strategy meeting for all execs and then our LT (I’m not the top leader) meets 2 (or very rarely 3) additional times for 2.5-4 days.