Corporate "AWAY DAYS" aaaggghhhh

I remember a toe curlingly hideous "team building" day when I had the misfortune to work for Sainsbury's. All the managers spent the day at a local pub (not as good as it sounds!) playing stupid games. Having an IQ in at least double figures I did quite well at the games but I had only just started working there, didn't know many of the other managers, and didn't know them much better at the end of it. The modus operandi of the store seemed to be to have all departments permanently at each others throats so the whole thing was a mind numbing waste of time.

I loved them, there were about 20 of us and we did various activities including yachting, pot holing, paint balling, white water rafting, treasure hunts, go karting. After my brain injury I was unable to participate in the physical stuff but I was always included in some way.

A friend (Sue) worked for a private company where they frequently had “away” days. Normally this meant a day at some venue where they played business games and did team bonding exercises. However there was usually a good lunch. Sue did not particularly enjoy them but they were in work time and part of the job so she always attended.

A new manager announced a team bonding day which involved competing teams trekking and orienteering in rough countryside. He made it clear that anyone who did not attend would have to show good reason, despite it being planned for a weekend. Sue was livid as she was a bit overweight and trekking about the countryside in the mud was definitely not her idea of a fun day out. However she was worried that it might affect her for promotion and opportunities.

The Friday before she was in the ladies room and saw her opportunity. The floor was wet and the cleaner had neglected to leave a warning sign. She limped into the office and told her colleagues that she had slipped on the wet floor and now her ankle was hurting. Her line manager (not the big boss) made her fill in an accident report and called her a taxi to go to A&E. He also offered to allow a colleague to go with her. Of course she refused and simply went home. Later she called in to say that she suffered a badly pulled muscle and her ankle had been strapped. She was advised to rest for a few days and was sooo disappointed at missing the activities that weekend. She limped back to work a few days later and enjoyed her "sick" days.

The cleaner who has left the floor wet got a warning for not putting out a sign.

One the awayday things were very poorly organized. A colleague fell and badly injured herself so that an ambulance had to be called. It turned out that the big boss who arranged the awayday did not take out the correct insurance. The injured employee got herself a solicitor and the company settled out of court. The boss who had organized the awayday got a real bollocking from the CEO and there will be no more awaydays of that kind ever again.

Sue did her co workers a favour.

Your friend’s boss sounds a lot less fun than mine!

I hate all that team building stuff, and my last proper job was very much into it.
Role play, making paper hats for eachother, and afternoon of drumming.
You name it, we did it.

We had numerous away day and teambuilding days in the NHS at vast cost and little outcome. I was put up in 4 star hotels as we're many colleagues at different times, given first class rail travel and numerous meals. I wasn't top of the tree by any means so much more was going on higher up. None of it was enjoyable, I doubt any of it was effective. Of course the pandemic put a stop to junketing so I wonder if any clever clogs has worked out the difference in output.

My son had to do one in Sydney where each team had to write and perform a song? Or rap ? He sent me the video ….unbelievably cringeworthy, his brother and I were helpless laughing. Why do the organisers of these things come up with such rubbish?

Dh once had to go on one of those corporate ‘team building’ horrors, where they were supposed to make rafts out of dead hedgehogs, catch frogs for dinner, and abseil down 500 foot cliffs etc. - OK, I’m exaggerating, but you get the picture.

Should add that they were told at the start that none of them was obliged to do any of it, and their employers would not be told if anyone ducked out.
Dh of course did it all.

I do wonder whether these things are still going - they always struck me as a massive con that was fashionable at the time. If you didn’t have the best relationship with your ‘team’ to start with, would it really be any better after being more or less forced to endure this sort of thing with them?

Oh, Witzend, I loved those images! Obviously, these activities were promoted heavily by firms which organised them.
I wonder how rigorous the assessment was of outcomes ?!

On a teachers’ weekend away run by Americans we had to play some silly game that was meant to show how good we are at negotiating for our departments. My group ended up at the ‘bottom’ and were very proud of ourselves as we knew this was just a game. The American facilitators couldn’t understand that we didn’t mind and kept begging us to have another go.

BigBertha1

We had numerous away day and teambuilding days in the NHS at vast cost and little outcome. I was put up in 4 star hotels as we're many colleagues at different times, given first class rail travel and numerous meals. I wasn't top of the tree by any means so much more was going on higher up. None of it was enjoyable, I doubt any of it was effective. Of course the pandemic put a stop to junketing so I wonder if any clever clogs has worked out the difference in output.

Must say I’m appalled to hear of the invariably cash-strapped NHS wasting money like that!

IMO these things were always something of a con - no doubt very cleverly marketed with a lot of psychobabble designed to convince managers that it’d be (a lot of) money well spent.

I dare say some participants will enjoy them, but was that ever the point? Many would also very likely enjoy a free trip to the theatre with dinner thrown in.

I remember one where you had to hug the person standing behind you and tell them what was a concern for you. I was sorely tempted to say something on the lines of making physical contact with random people who you neither knew or cared about. The person running this session was a smug, condescending and nasty social worker who thought she knew everything. I was glad when she left, in fact a group of us cracked a bottle of champagne.

I always made a real fuss about doing that kind of thing.
It's absolutely and completely out of my comfort zone to hug people, and considering the charity i worked for made a big song and dance about rights, choices, individuality and values of people, i considered they should extend the same courtesy to their staff.

We had them every 4 months. It was a private company and the Boss believed they brought everyone together to have some fun. I organised them.
We had go-karting, shooting, paint balling, quad biking, ten pin bowling, archery, and Zorbing that I can remember.
Most people mentioned they enjoyed them, and everything was paid for by the company.
A photo gallery was compiled after each one and circulated - that was fun too.
It was a happy company to work for.

None of us liked it, although some proffered it to working, and the food was good.
I would much rather have worked, or done a training day.

Preffered.
I don't even know how to spell it now my phone has started playing silly buggers.

Preferred.

Only ever done one. After the obligatory introduction exercises, it involved
team canoeing (thank heavens for painkillers later),
archery (not my forté),
skeet shooting (better),
riding quad bikes (stay well back to avoid the mud chucked up by the racers),
driving go-karts where the steering had been reversed (crazy but good fun),
and playing netball driving a mini-digger (for which I discovered a hidden talent that I’ve never been able to use since).
I’m not sure what it was supposed to achieve, but it was well worth giving up a weekend.

It sounds dangerous!

TillyTrotter

We had them every 4 months. It was a private company and the Boss believed they brought everyone together to have some fun. I organised them.
We had go-karting, shooting, paint balling, quad biking, ten pin bowling, archery, and Zorbing that I can remember.
Most people mentioned they enjoyed them, and everything was paid for by the company.
A photo gallery was compiled after each one and circulated - that was fun too.
It was a happy company to work for.

IMO such events that are actually intended to be fun are one thing.

The sort of Bear Grylls thing dh did, where people are supposed to force themselves to do things they would never choose to do, or that they actively dread or are afraid of, is surely a rather different matter.
(Dh said he didn’t mind any of it, but then he’d never in a million years have admitted that he was secretly sh*tting little blue lights, as my father so quaintly used to put it.)

I think I'd be doing big brown ones if someone tried to get me in a canoe or on a quad bike.

I did several but one 2 day course sticks in my mind that was so emotionally exhausting.
We were all senior Professional front line NHS management teams who have to handle difficult issues.
Senior clinical staff like myself and young Doctors who's next job will be Consultants.

Professional actors played out parts, all sorts of emotive scenario's, with us in different mixed teams.

The Doctors really struggled, myself and my colleague helped them as we had much more experience. However in the final individual assessment, the assessors had noted we supported them, they pulled our action apart to the extent I ended up in tears. It wasn't a bad way just over honest their objective was our mental health should be protected. We look after our team who looks after us?
We need to think about self preservation.

No tree hugging this time, left there completely knackered.

Oh how I hated this rubbish..... so contrived and so monumentally pointless.

I remember one where we were all sitting in a circle to do a relaxation exercise - the facilitator for this was American, and rattled on about relaxing each bit of you, as in "Concentrate on your neck, concentrate on your shoulders - in his US drawl. Then he got to "concentrate on your genital" and I had a sudden vision of all these little genitals popping up round the circle (the men that is) and nearly bust a gut trying not to giggle.....childish, moi?

MissAdventure

I think I'd be doing big brown ones if someone tried to get me in a canoe or on a quad bike.

But mine was some time ago. Were you not more intrepid back then MissAdventure?
I’d try everything again except quad bikes, oh and I’d need help to get out of the canoe now.