Team building days- do you hate them?

Just highlights how team building events are organised by people who don’t have a fucking clue. You are part of the team, no more/less than your team mates, the event should have been organised for the whole team.

If I was in your department and knew about this I would have refused to go and told them exactly why.

Sorry you manager did this to you.

Team building day with just my immediate team, great. We’ve worked together for years & get on.

Team-building day with the whole department, I could stand it.

Going away for a weekend, god no. And if we were expected to share bedrooms I’d find a dozen different reasons why I couldn’t.

what's your situation, OP? Partner? Kids? How old are they? Are you keen on a career or are you working to pay the rent/keep NI contributions up/childminder?
What kind of work do you do? does it really depend on actual good teamwork, or just everyone knowing their job/role and doing it?

I used to be in the Army. Basically a permanent team-building exercise. I loved it for the most part. Even the bits other people hated. It wasn't just a job to me though.

I worked for a manufacturing company (EMEA office, HQ in Asia) They flippin' LOVED team building. I also wanted to get on (promotions etc) but i wasn't necessarily wedded to the fact that i needed to team build with the finance and logistics departments, outside that we needed to work together and when everyone did their jobs, that was enough. However. Some of the days were good and combined with the annual summer party (so those "go ape" type things, sometimes, canooeing down a river - you were always in 4 person canoes and not with anyone from your team - etc etc. And they were great fun. Others, organised by HQ folks were more... esoteric and although we made the best out of them (building a table catapult from Chopsticks, elastics and a spoon and then shooting a projectile at a target - fun but i really didn't need to do that one. And the teams from other EMEA countries who travelled in? also not so much.

Am i travelling 6 hours on a bank holiday? I want 1 day TOIL and i will be in first class on a train or I'm not going. and i will have a single hotel room or i won't be there. Otherwise? sure, why not. When my DCs were smaller that would have been more difficult but if it would have been easy for DH to get time off? sure, otherwise: no thank you.

@crumblingschools absolutely not! At the end we all had to give feedback and literally everyone told this guy he needed to chill. His response was « But we won! » so I suppose there was no point arguing with him.

No thanks, I have enough trouble wirh a full time workload pushed into my part time hours.
There's absolutely no way I'd be giving up my own free time to travel 6 hours for a work event.

What event is suitable for Bob, aged 63, recently become a grandfather with two years to retirement; Myra, 22, just graduated and single, likes to spend her weekends clubbing and Imogen, recently had her second child and just back, generally spends weekends with other Mums having a coffee at a soft play centre?

Oh, I know the one thing they all have in common, their work! A well run workplace builds the teams at work, it doesn’t needs entirely fake activities to do it.

I was on a school residential trip at a PGL centre last week. I saw a group of adults dressed in costumes (superheros, Scooby Doo etc) getting strapped into abseiling harnesses. I wondered if they were on a team building day and felt so sorry for them.

It depends on the situation; a nice sit down over drinks and meal? Lovely. Abseiling dressed as Scooby Doo...not so much.

@NoraLuka would you put up with someone in your team, back in your workplace, acting like that and shouting at everyone to get their work done.

I must have been lucky, the team building days have always been fun where ever I’ve worked - Alton Towers, paintball, cocktail making, cooking class, a hike followed by pub lunch, fancy dress ball…they all usually involve getting pissed at the end of the night in some random club.
Of course there was the usual fluff in between, where you have to do an actual team building exercise (that no one really learns anything from)
They’re pretty much just social events for everyone to let their hair down.

I hate them with a fiery passion. They are designed for very social people, are hell on earth for introverts like me, force you to share more of yourself than you need to, and are a waste of time. I have my own business now, but when I worked for other people I made sure I worked to a high standard, did everything that was asked of me and was pleasant enough to work with in the office, and my professional obligations ended there. I had no interest in socialising outside of the office, no interest in nights out with random people from work, I just wanted to do what I was being paid for and then get on with my life outside of work.

Waste of time, and no way I'd give up my free time for it. Unless I am paid overtime to attend.

Last team building I did involved a treasure hunt over a 10 km course. I got put in a team with a bunch of guys who do triathlons in their spare time and a stoner who said he hadn’t done any sports since PE at school. One of the triathlon guys immediately went into psychopath Army bootcamp mode and spent the afternoon yelling RUN RUN RUN! I didn’t dare drink too much water because I worried about needing the loo, and it was nearly 30 degrees so ended up with heatstroke. Our team won by miles though!

I suppose it was quite fun but would have been better without the heatstroke, and I did get along better with the guys afterwards as I hadn’t really spoken to them much before that.

I’m self employed now and no team building days!

My idea of hell.

I’m afraid I do judge those people who love team building activities- you know the show-off who is far too excited about it. I would actively avoid any company that does these days.

I really like the people I work with but I hate group events. I also don't go to parties anymore.

I would rather have a day to catch up on stuff of my choosing (teacher). Enforced fun is no fun.

If I attend it had better be in work time, involve no extra travel and include excellent food.

They are brilliant for extroverts who want to pretend to be single and relive university for a couple of days including sitting with the cool group at the bar and maybe copping off with Fred or Fiona. Also a fantastic opportunity to embarrass your rivals.

For those who have grown up and have healthy boundaries, they are purgatory.

That's really horrible 💐

I hate team building days or activities and if I can get away with not attending I will do that. If I have to attend, in the past I have declined to abseil, dance, play tennis, go kart, climb walls, do yoga and ride bikes. I'll just observe, drink the coffee and eat the cakes. I couldn't give a flying fuck what it does to my career and I have had loads of people telling me they wish they had my assertiveness.

If it's in work time who is doing the work that needs to be done?
If it's in non work time who is doing the washing / feeding the kids/ walking the dog / listening to kids read / doing the shopping etc
What's the actual benefit? It always involves more work.
Coffee / drinks on a Friday or a longer lunch or something is all you need.
Hated them with a passion.

Now I've changed teams, I don't have to go to them.

Our Ops Director thinks they are a complete load of bollocks. We have a quarterly team meeting in various places, where things that are important are discussed.

In the evening, he flexes his company credit card and we all have a meal out.

Nobody in the team complains at that.

I'm disabled,

I use a wheelchair.

My workplace got into team building for a while. They never did solve the problem of what to do with me.

I remember on one, the director in charge of our department said to me that she didn't think I could access the team building event (an escape room). I agreed with her.

She offered to include me by sitting in a nearby coffee shop with me all day and chatting,

I'd rather cut my own throat,

I stayed at work and caught up in paperwork and got upset about how my accident changed my life.

I mean, whatever floats your boat but what you're describing sounds horrible, and I like the people I work with.

I learnt years ago to keep a boundary between work and home and 'team building', particularly when it involves hotels and eating breakfast together, crosses that boundary. Not for me thanks.

I hate them. I don't want to bond with my colleagues. I am just there to do my job. I hate how they have games that pry into your private life too. I hate ice breakers. I certainly wouldn't give up my bank holiday. I also have refused to go on one that means a night away and have had to explain private medical circumstances to them because of that.

The main point is I have never attended one that I have found useful in any way and then I go back to my normal job with even more to cram in.

Teambuilding has to be a humorous Orwellian word.

It does the precise opposite of what it is meant to do. It encourages too much drinking and encourages inappropriate romances and affairs. It also discourages work/life balance and takes people away from their families. It also builds cliques of extroverts rather than teams, which should be inclusive.

In addition, they are a total waste of shareholder funds.

I don’t really understand why companies still do these.