Sixers and Devils Employees Are Bonding at Expensive Offsites

Caution: If corporate buzzwords, acronyms and manufactured niceties turn you off, you might want to look away for this one.

Inc., the publication for people who like to say but don’t do, wrote a lengthy piece about Scott O’Neil’s Sixers-Devils offsites, which approach six-figures in cost.

This year, top employees from both clubs assembled their bodies in Hershey for team building exercises where attendees engaged in personal sharing sessions, swapped Salesforce tips (and presumably leads), took aim at senior managers in dunk tanks (a requirement at corporate retreats), and – my favorite – this:

At this year’s Go Forward, the first presentation was called “hang your banner.” In pro sports, a championship team typically hangs a banner in the arena rafters to commemorate a title season.

As an exercise, the employees were asked: What do you envision as your life’s banner? What would you have it raised for? Who’d introduce you, the night it was raised, and what would you want them to say? Then, each employee received an actual banner, on which they could draw and/or write out their ideal commemorations. They discussed these banners in small groups.

[I’d like mine to commemorate page views and I’d want to be introduced by a three-man group comprised of Jeff Carter, Riley Cooper and the faceless Phillies social media person who’s so terrible at their job. I can only assume Jim would like his to commemorate the number of hipster concerts he attended where the location of the show was tweeted out only minutes before the band started playing.]

The goal of Go Forward is to foster communication and #sharing between Sixers and Devils employees in similar roles and – buzzword alert – “to build trust, teamwork, and leadership skills through presentations, social mixing, and physical activities.” If that all sounds a bit forced (or made you vomit a little), you ain’t seen nothing yet. Attendees were also each given a … you know what, I can’t even write it without getting skeeved out … here:

“The Dash” presentation concluded with a literal takeaway: Each employee received a dollar bill with his or her name on it. The idea behind the dollar was symbolic: Upon returning to normal office life, employees could give their dollar to another employee. The gift is a way of saying: I want to make a dash with you. I want us to reach milestones together. I want to invest in you.

Saadeh gave his dollar to an employee who oversees The Prudential’s analytics division. “I wanted to have a greater trust with this person,” he says. “It’s not just saying we’ll hold hands. It’s specifically about setting goals together.” Already, Saadeh and this analytics leader have met in his office to discuss what their milestones should be.

It’s times like these I’m glad I work in my underwear and can pick my nose without fear of judgement.

But, it sounds like O’Neil, whose parents ran team building workshops for a living, takes these pretty seriously and that attendees actually buy-in (or at least they say they do when talking to reporters from McDonald’s-for-business-people, Inc.). So I guess that’s really all that matters.

Full story here.

H/T to reader Matt