I would say to you the same thing I say to my clients: document, document, document.
Why? Because if you ever do decide to launch a suit, your notes provide your lawyer with ammunition to question your employer. For example, “Employer, on September 20, your employee Chimera informed you that on September 27, he had an appointment with his physician. Yet you denied him the opportunity to visit the physician. Why?” This kind of specificity is difficult for an employer to duck, especially in a sworn deposition that can come back to haunt the deposee at trial.
I would suggest that you consult with a lawyer regarding these issues. I am not an American practitioner, but from what I do know, I would suggest various human rights issues are at play here (grounds of “physical disability”); as well as any rights you may have under company policy as regards sick time; and whatever rights are yours under your state’s employment legislation.
What you would do and what happens in real life are two completely different things. I’ve never been to a company function that WASN’T held during off-duty hours, and my duty hours were almost never 9-5, M-F. I did have one job that was 10 AM to 6 PM, but I always worked Sundays, and sometimes Saturdays too. More usually, I’d work the second shift.
As a general rule, if the company usually operates 9-5, M-F, then the event will start at 6 or 7 PM, and last at least a couple of hours. This ensures that nobody will be able to go home and eat and relax a bit. People with long commutes might have to stay at the workplace, or go hang out at a bar. Oh, and it’s a bad idea to show up at such a function unless you’re pretty sober. And no, the workers are NOT paid for this attendance. And yet, not showing up will mark the worker as being “not a team player”.
Bosses/The Company do not own a worker’s time when s/he’s on the clock. They may require him or her to do whatever’s in his/her job description, but they may not legally order someone to perform illegal or even humiliating acts. Now, these orders may be issued, and even followed, but there’s a limit to what a company or boss can legally order someone to do.
Is this anecdotal or is there actually some evidence for this? This is most unfortunate if this is the case - I don’t have a lot of working experience (only 3 years) but I pretty much always enjoy team building events, as I see them as basically opportunities to socialize with your co-workers with company funding. My previous company scheduled team building during work hours and gave us a half day off for it usually - my current company typically schedules them for off-work hours.
I admit that I do like most of my co-workers on a personal level so I don’t mind spending time with them even outside of work, even though I don’t normally go out of the way to do that. Do you really think most people resent being asked to attend team-building activities? Mind you I’ve never had to do some activity that some 3rd party company organizes with some team-building goal in mind. Perhaps my personal experiences are not typical, though both companies that I have worked for are/were reasonably large corporations (each >5000 employees).
Although I enjoyed some of the company functions/parties, I didn’t enjoy them as much as I would have enjoyed being with my own friends and family. I have a daughter, and during that time she was between about 2 and 10 years old. What I wanted to do with my time off was spend time with people of my own choosing. What I needed to do was be a parent and/or do chores.
While company parties/team building exercises can be a social outlet for people who don’t get out much, most people DO have friends and family, and these company functions can eat into personal time. And everyone I’ve ever talked to IRL has always said that given the choice between even the best party and having a bonus would prefer the monetary bonus.
For the most part, even though I got along with my co-workers and bosses, they weren’t necessarily people that I wanted to socialize with, because for the most part I didn’t particularly like them, and had very little in common with them other than the job. I DO like the members of the mod staff on the SDMB, and I’ve occasionally gotten together with them…but we have something in common, and we almost never see each other, as we don’t live in the same area.
And every time this subject comes up, just about everyone on the SDMB (posters, not modstaff talking about modmeets) chimes in to say “I hate it!”
The people who run team building exercises will, of course, say that they have positive effects. But talking to people who have to go to these things will reveal another side…that the activities are vastly unpopular, and have a detrimental effect on morale. The exercises generally have very little application in the workplace, and someone who is poor at something like, say, rock climbing might have a poor performance in that activity, but is actually the best worker that the company has.
Companies don’t pay thousands of dollars for this shit if they can’t force people to do it, because few people would do them voluntarily. I’ve also yet to do one of these wastes of time, money, and energy that actually was fun. My experience is that most of these “exercises” consist of standing around waiting my turn to do something I don’t want to do with people I don’t want to do them with. This is not how I choose to spend my time.
I have a question for the legal people. If I’m attending one of these on my off time, and I’m injured, can I sue my employer? I bet that’s a test case waiting to happen.
Depends on State, etc etc and what’s in your employment contract, but the key issue would be showing that the activity was compulsory for your workplace, I guess.
I’d like to build a team myself, but no one is willing to give me the spare body parts necessary. Could I harvest my current team?
I concur. See, the problem is that employers, and people like you, think there is some magic bullet for fostering workplace cooperation and increased morale. There is, it’s just not what you think. It isn’t team building exercises, it isn’t forcing people to do annoying things just because you “own their time”. It’s treating people with respect, giving them reasonable wages, good benefits, and a stake in the profitability of the company. When you do that, people will work hard for you, because they want to stay in their position. But you all don’t want to do that, because it cuts down on middle management’s individual profitability when the workers are being paid well and enjoy coming to work. It’s easier to pay them shit and find something to take the place of your obviously poor managerial skills. Oh I know, team building exercise!!!111!
Furthermore, you absolutely do not “own my time” M-F 9-5. You hired me to do a job which was outlined in the job duties and descriptions, and in exchange for doing that job you pay me money. That’s the extent of our transaction. You don’t get to dictate outside of my job responsibilities what I do and where I go, as long as what I’m doing isn’t a violation of that job. I think this shit started cropping up right around the time that the whole “being loyal to the company” thing went out the window, which by the way happened when companies stopped being loyal to their employees. So you want to manufacture loyalty through this garbage. It sounds to me like you haven’t been working in the real world for very long, and if you have, you’re an absolutely terrible manager.
We tend to have both types. I hate the one where we are required to go downtown and pay for parking (or pay to take the train downtown) then go have Mandatory Fun at some Fun Center or other. Here’s a hint Mandatory Fun isn’t.
I love the picnic that we have in the summer. Free Parking. Free food. Free Beer. They have some horseshoe spikes and cornhole boards set up. But there are no required activities. It is much more fun.
FWIW, the only teambuilding crap I was ever at was held during 9-5. I have been to evening office parties or drinks after work, but those were always optional.
I was a manager once, but I quit that job and got my soul back. When I was, however, upper management expected me to conduct at least one retreat/teambuilder each year.
By my thinking, that teambuilder wasn’t for me. So I had no business, IMO, deciding for my team what they might want to do and/or be willing to participate in. I had one secretary with a slight physical disability, so wall climbing/obstacle courses/laser tag was not going to fly. Another employee was a recovering alcoholic, so taking everyone out for beer and pizza was not going to fly either.
Finally, I learned to just sit 'em all down at a staff meeting and let them decide – as a team – what their teambuilder was going to be. This way, everyone bought in, everyone had a hand in the decisionmaking, and everyone participated.
My team typically chose some form of service project. One year, we bought a bunch of wreaths and decorated them, and then took them (as a team) over to the Children’s Home Society along with a bunch of toys for the orphan kids. We did toy drives, animal rescue fundraisers, stuff like that. We’d spend a few hours as a team decorating or crafting some little gifty thing we were going to sell or donate and then go deliver our gifty thing to the charity the team chose, then we’d go play putt-putt golf or go have beer & pizza (beer optional).
Short of handing out cash, at least my team got to choose whatever corporate bullshit teambuilder they were going to do. The process of choosing banded them together more than the actual activity did, the irony of which was not lost on me. I thought it was hilarious. By the time we got to the activity, it was all cake. The hard teambuilding work happened in the staff meeting when they all negotiated with each other about how to spend their “no work work day.”
In my experience service projects are the least bad team-builds. They accommodate a variety of ages and physical skill levels, and maybe possibly accomplish something for a charity. If you absolutely must do a team-build, make it a service project.
Enjoy your youth while it lasts. (And think of this thread when you get screwed over by your first company.)
My guess on that is that companies are very careful to keep their asses covered on this point - nothing is compulsory, {wink wink}*; you’ll just never get promoted again after you decline to come out and schmooze on your own time, and I think most employees understand this (plus there’s the whole answering the questions from 20 people about why you couldn’t make it). It’s the same deal with things like United Way campaigns; it’s totally not cool (or even legal, I imagine) to force people to donate, but my husband got strong-armed by, I think it was three levels of management last year when he declined to participate (including the guilt trip of being told that he was the one who was preventing his team from getting their 100% participation gift).
No manager should ever have to go looking for ways to improve morale. It’s easy –
Pay well.
Interact with your colleagues respectfully and decently, honestly and fairly. Deal with problem colleagues quickly and efficiently. Protect your subordinates from people outside your unit. Give credit where credit is due. Offer help as needed.
Do not make inordinate demands, like unpaid overtime. Better yet, be a good manager and manage such as to avoid the need.
Don’t make trouble about people exercising earned rights like vacation and sick leave.
Give people the flexibility to deal with their personal needs, like family, health, etc.
Understand the work your people do.
It’s pretty damn simple. You’ll be surprised how good morale is. The only time when a company needs to construct a special “morale building” exercise is when management is behaving like shits.
Oh, but there’s always that one moron in the crowd who’s enjoying that stupid crap.
I am not a lawyer, but I was involved with one of these from the inside. In my experience, though the company will close ranks, they are also a lot more willing to pay a settlement than face a court battle, which is bad publicity. In many cases the company does not document either. In the case I was involved with, it got nowhere near court, but only to the state EEOC. if the owner of the company is the guilty party, it might be harder, but if not managers are often willing to throw their direct reports to the wolves to spare themselves hassle. It is not their money, after all.
(And think of this thread when you get screwed over by your first company.)