Why group photos from team events matter more than you think

Group photos from team events matter because they become the team's shared record: proof that the dinner, the volunteer day and the offsite happened, who was there, and what the team is like when it isn't working. They give new hires a quick picture of the people they've joined, and taking them can even make the event itself more enjoyable. They only work if people are comfortable being in them, so set a few consent rules before anyone raises a phone.

What photos do for a team

A team's history mostly lives in people's heads. When someone leaves, their memory of the first offsite goes with them. A shared album keeps it. A year of event photos shows a team that has done things together, which is hard to convey any other way to someone who started last week. If you're planning events for new starters, the guide to team outings in a new hire's first 30 days covers what helps most.

There's also some evidence that the act of taking photos changes the experience. In nine experiments reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2016, people who took photos during positive experiences, such as a bus tour or a meal, enjoyed them more than people who didn't, because photographing made them pay closer attention. The effect disappeared when the camera got in the way, and it didn't help people who were already fully absorbed in a hands-on activity.

A related set of studies in Psychological Science in 2017 found that people who took photos remembered more of what they saw and less of what they heard. For an event, that's an argument for one designated photographer rather than everyone filming everything. The rest of the group can listen.

Candids over the lineup

The posed group shot is useful as a record of who came. The photos people go back to are the candid ones: two people from different teams talking at the bar, someone mid-laugh at the bowling lane, the table when the food arrives.

Our guidance for a single photographer:

• Take the group shot early, while everyone is fresh and before anyone leaves.
• Shoot people arriving, small conversations and the activity itself.
• Get the setting too: the venue, the food, the view. Those photos help the next organizer decide whether to book it again.
• Aim for 20 to 40 photos across the event, then pick the best 10 to share.
• Skip anyone eating, mid-drink or clearly not wanting to be photographed.

Set consent rules before the event

Photos of identifiable people are personal information, and a work relationship makes "I didn't want to say no" a real risk. The UK's data protection regulator, the ICO, says in its guidance on consent that consent usually isn't freely given when there's a clear imbalance of power, and uses employers and workers as its example. You don't need to be in the UK to take the point: if people feel they can't opt out, their yes doesn't mean much.

What that looks like in practice, as our guidance (check with whoever handles legal or HR for your location, especially before any outside use):

Situation	Our guidance
Taking photos at the event	Say in the invite that there'll be a photographer and how to opt out. Make opting out a quiet word to the photographer, with no questions asked.
Sharing in the team's internal album	Fine for people who haven't opted out. Remove any photo within a day if someone asks, no reason needed.
Posting on social media, the careers page or in marketing	Ask each identifiable person first, for that specific use, in writing. Internal sharing is not permission for outside use.
Photos that show screens, whiteboards, badges or documents	Don't share them. Crop or delete.
Guests, partners or children at family events	Ask the parent or the guest directly. Don't assume the employee's okay covers them.
Someone drinking, or in an unflattering moment	Don't share it, even internally.

Tell people in advance where the photos will go and who can see them. "The album for this outing, visible to everyone at the company" is a clear answer. "We'll post some" isn't.

Make the photos easy to find

Photos spread across 15 phones aren't a record. Within a day or two of the event, collect them in one album per event and tell people where it is. Our guidance is to post a short note with three or four of the best shots in your team channel, linking to the full album, so people who missed the event can see what it was like.

Once you have a few months of albums, they're also useful for planning. Photos of a venue answer "was it too loud?" or "how big was the private room?" better than memory does, which makes them worth attaching to your post-event debrief notes.

Where TeamOutings fits

Every outing in TeamOutings has a photo album. People upload from the iPhone or Android app or the web, and anyone can like a photo. On the web you can tag people and download originals.

Albums are visible to everyone in your company's TeamOutings account, including people who didn't go, so the consent rules above matter. Tell people that before the event, and don't upload photos of anyone who has opted out. A photo can be removed by the person who uploaded it or by an admin, so when someone asks for a photo to come down, either one can do it.