1.
Offsite Training and Team Development
● What Is Offsite Training?
Off Site training, also known as Off-the-job training refers to an education method where
employees learn more about their job or the latest advancements in their field at a
location away from their workplace. This type of training essentially helps employees
perform their job more efficiently.
● What Is Team Development?
A team is a group of individuals who work together toward a common goal. Each
member of a team is valuable to the common goal in their own way. Team development
strives to meet these criteria with ongoing reflection and growth. Like any form of
development, it takes time and dedication to be effective. Team development ensures
that the team can thrive in the long term. The five stages of Team development are:
Forming, Stroming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning.

2.
Features of Outdoor and Offsite Training Programs
● Program participants are placed in a demanding outdoor environment, where they
rely on skills they did not realize they had and on one another to complete the
program. The emphasis is on building not only teamwork but also self-confidence
for leadership
● Another novel approach is for participants to perform stand-up comedyin front of
work associates. Participants attend a Comedy Experience workshop in which
they learn about the importance of humor on the job, and develop their own three-
to-four minute comedy routines. The potential payoff to the company from staff
members taking a turn at stand up comedy is that the experience brings them
closer together

3.
● Outward Bound is the best-known and largest outdoor training program. It offers more
than 500 courses in wilderness areas in twenty states and provinces. The courses
typically run from three days to four weeks.
● The Outward Bound Professional Development Program, geared toward organizational
leaders, emphasizes teamwork, leadership, and risk taking. Among the courses offered
are dog-sledding, skiing and winter camping, desert backpacking, canoe expeditions,
sailing, sea kayaking, alpine mountaineering, mountain backpacking and horse-trailing,
and cycling.
● Rope activities are typical of outdoor training. Participants are attached to a secure
pulley with ropes; then they climb up a ladder and jump off to another spot. Sometimes
the rope is extended between two trees.

4.
● Another activity is a trust fall, in which each person takes a turn standing on a platform
and falling backward into the arms of coworkers. The trust fall can also be done on
ground level.
● Outdoor training enhances teamwork by helping participants examine the process of
getting things done through working with people. Participants practice their
communication skills in exercises by issuing precise instructions. At the same time, they
have to learn to trust one another because their survival appears to depend on trust.
● One of the most intensive and extensive examples of team building through outdoor
training is hiking, kayaking, adventure racing, and breaking boards with the goal of
building a more collaborative, team oriented company. Participants frequently shout to
each other, “You’re awesome,” throughout many of the activities.
● A major rationale for the extensive team-building activity is that when people are placed in
unfamiliar situations, especially when fatigued, they are more likely to ask for help and
work as a team

5.
Evaluation of Outdoor Training for Team Development
❖ Positive Evaluation
➢ Many outdoor trainers and participants believe strongly that they derive substantial
personal benefits from outdoor training. Among the most important are greater self-
confidence, appreciating hidden strengths, and learning to work better with others.
➢ Many training directors also have positive attitudes toward outdoor training. They
believe that a work team that experiences outdoor training will work more
cooperatively back at the office.
➢ One way to facilitate the transfer of training from outdoors to the office is to hold
debriefing and follow-up sessions. Debriefing takes place at the end of outdoor
training. The participants review what they learned and discuss how they will apply
their lessons to the job.

6.
❖ Negative Evaluation
➢ Many people have legitimate reservations about outdoor training, however. Although
outdoor trainers claim that almost no accidents occur, a threat to health and life does exist,
and groin injuries are frequent.
➢ Another concern is that the teamwork learned in outdoor training does not spill over into the
job environment. Some approaches to outdoor training are so physically demanding that
they can be questioned on ethical and medical grounds.
➢ A major concern about offsite training is that some participants or potential participants find
it repellent. Not every worker wants to play games, climb rocks, or prepare a gourmet meal
with coworkers after hours.