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I always feel like everyone else I know has some great story about going to a corporate retreat–sweat lodges, pontoon boats, severely rustic weekends (a la “Colonial House”). CNNMoney went looking for employee ambivalence to these “offsites” and found it:
A dozen workers at a small international marketing company recently found themselves at a retreat run by experts from an “experiential learning” firm. “They came in talking about the seven cornerstones of teamwork,” says one attendee, so each employee was given a pouch filled with seven colored stones that stood for concepts like sharing resources, defining roles, and communicating frequently. Whenever a participant violated a cornerstone during the exercise, others had to roll a stone at him across the table. “Not communicating? Here’s a purple stone,” says the attendee mockingly. “It was ridiculous. We’ve worked together better since that silly offsite, but it’s probably because we sat around the bar afterward laughing.”
During my longest tenure in a full-time position, I have to say I was kind of hoping we’d at least get to do group Bikram or a trust fall. I think “Photoshop Olympics” interoffice emails became a kind of stand-in for enforced camaraderie, though I suppose they fostered a cliquishness for those not cc’d, those with whom we probably needed to do a high ropes course. So, now I’m going to troll for corporate retreat stories.
Comments (3)
Comment
Since I work for the Defense Department and we spend public taxpayer dollars, we can’t really do this sort of stuff. So we do cheesy non-travel versions.
My bicycle club buddies and I rented a Velodrome for three hours of fun. While we were there we got talking, and the ‘coach’ told us that they hosted corporate retreats as team building exercises.
40-something mid-level managers are given brakeless one speed bicycles that cannot coast and are turned loose on a banked track after a half hour of instruction. I’d pay to see that.
posted by fixedgear on 8-30-2007 at 4:28 am
I went on one last summer for my department, there was a lot of crying followed by a lot of drinking, not sure it it actually worked
All my company did is send off one dept off at a time and make you spend 4 days with each other tell all about your life before and they really like the juicy stuff,
again all it did was spend a lot of corp funds that could have gone elsewhere
posted by Lindsey on 8-30-2007 at 3:00 pm
I only went to “picnic day” of a corp. retreat as the guest of a relative. They did some gimmick involving row boat racing on a creek. I played volleyball with the (over-the-top) arrogant, obnoxious son of the big boss on my team. Who had made a grand entrance in his BMW convertible, and made an annoying prick of himself. He saw me as some kind of competition because I was the only guy in his age range. He acted like he was a star athlete and had to make up for the lesser players on his team by hogging the court, smashing into the 40 year olds, and trying to outdo me. I figured I shouldn’t say anything or complain because I was a guest, and he was “Mr. Bigshot’s” kid.
posted by Tdave on 8-31-2007 at 2:37 am