Leave the office and get motivated

From exercise classes to assault courses and even painting, the world of corporate team-building days is growing.

In the UAE, a Dubai-based company is taking the trend one step further by running corporate boot camps for companies aiming to improve relationships within the office.

Physical Advantage, the team behind the military boot camps that have gone down a storm since they launched a couple of years ago, have moved from the beach to the boardroom and seen a huge increase in interest as a result.

"It is definitely a growing market in Dubai. The most important thing of all is educating and getting the word out because once companies see the benefits gained from these types of activities they always take part," says Guillaume Mariole, the company's Director of Sales and Marketing.

Boot camps might not appeal to everyone, but with different companies running different courses across the country they all agree on one thing: that they work.

While the idea of a team-building session was once met with groans from staff, over the years they have grown into something many companies invest in as a way to align policies and integrate new employees into the set up. Even as far back as the 1920s there was the Hawthorn Studies reasearch, which analysed the results when colleagues were put under different conditions. The process concluded that building a sense of group or company identity was the most important factor for the health of an organisation. And this is still the case today.

Hazel Jackson, the CEO of biz-events, which has organised events for more than 500 companies in the region, says: "Team-building sessions are powerful tools to re-enforce internal communications, align staff on core messages and goals, launch brands or help create more effective people and, in turn, create more effective organisations."

The company has a range of activities in its portfolio including Screen Test, which asks participants to script and rehearse dialogue to follow an animated film clip. But Jackson says it is not just about the activities, but what it says about those doing them. "We can analyse how colleagues work together to see where the gaps are," she says.

At Physical Advantage, they take a more energetic approach and have a number of courses from boot camp to spider's web and river crossing, where all members of the team must cross a 10-metre "river" without falling, which they say is the perfect way to instill discipline and co-operation.

"These activities benefit organisations as they break down work place barriers. During the sessions, ranks, status, seniority etc are left at the door and everyone is treated as an equal with equal responsibilities allowing individuals to show their personality and other skills that may not be demonstrated in the work place," says Mariole.

"The sessions also make people feel good. They show how competitive some people are and how shy others may be. Yet even though these personality traits are out on the table, they all work together to solve different problems whilst having fun."

Getting away from the office environment is a popular way to deliver these courses. Another-team building company, Abami, refers to their tasks as "experiential learning" because everything is learnt through doing. From climbing walls and high-rope sites, colleagues rely on each other to finish tasks and help break down barriers.

"Dubai is a multicultural environment and has a fast pace of growth with new people joining companies all the time who need to be integrated," says Vanessa Hopwood, Abami's Director of Business Development.