I’ve heard people say, (paraphrased) “work is work: if your going to give me free time then let me go home.”.
On the other side, an impromptu surprise that you get to be relieved of your responsibilities for the day and go do something fun seems like it would be beneficial for people’s mental health and creativity.
Yet, one can imagine if someone had a sick child at home, or some other concern that infinitely more important than work that it might be a bit torturous to go out and try to have fun with your coworkers when you would rather, and rightly so, want to be home attending to the more important thing.
Although I would want to be the type of leader that I person would feel comfortable just telling that they needed to go home if such a matter of importance were to arise.
If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.
Yet, much like buying a gift card for someone you know would never spend money on themselves perhaps it could be a more memorable and helpful experience for them to go out and have fun with no responsibilities.
Yet this may simply be an expression of the lonely ness and desire for human connection that I personally feel, due the current circumstances of semi isolation (just me and my partner) in a new and strange city.
I am not a CEO, I just graduated and I’m working to get my first job. One day I would like to lead people, and perhaps this, per my lack of knowledge, seems a bit farcical, but I wanted to gather some opinions, thanks!
For me it depended entirely on how happy I was in the rest of my job.
If I’m, say, being death-marched, or requirements are written in sand, or senior management refuses to ever make a decision in writing, or my manager looks over my shoulder when I’m typing, or you just told me we’re going 100% AI for QA, I don’t want your fucking playdate.
If the team is happy, offsites can be a fun way to get some bonding in.
If the team is unhappy, they are there for their check and that is it, they are not paid to pretend to like you at an off-site. Take the money you would use for the party and hand it out as cash in an envelope to everybody individually.