Outdoor training: can you afford teamwork?

• Author: Couch, Robin

Care to jump off a 30-foot pole or rope yourself to two coworkers and climb a wall in tandem, all in the name of corporate improvement? Some big-name companies are asking their employees to step in line to prove their commitment to teamwork. It's part of the outdoor training, or "experiential learning," craze.

Whatever you call it, the project can be expensive. Richard Wagner, a management professor at the University of Wisconsin who has done extensive research on outdoor training by corporations, says the cost of wilderness programs, the more strenuous, all-outdoors version of the training, averages $2,800 per participant, and outdoor-centered programs, which combine indoor living with outdoor exercises, average $300 a person.

With those numbers, who can afford the field days? Organizations like Amoco, Arthur Andersen, AT&T, DuPont, Ford, Merrill Lynch, and the Department of Defense, says Wagner. And companies like Asea Brown Boveri and Salomon Brothers, adds Thomas Rowe, whose Newport Yacht Services in Rhode island offers corporate clients three clays of team-building-through-sailing at $2,000 a person. All of these companies are looking for the formula to improve their competitiveness, and they're hoping outdoor training is part of it.

That's why they send everyone from top executives to sales representatives and hourly-wage workers to outdoor training centers. Companies want the trainers to teach their employees teamwork and trust and to make them more open to change. The training vendors' ploys range from suggesting that participants cross their arms a new way to asking them to jump from a five-story ledge, led to the ground by a rope and harness, with a crowd of cheering teammates for support.

The DuPont Company is one of the forerunners in using outdoor training. Clifford Nix, director of quality and leadership development for DuPont's Fibers Segment, reports the company is investing $25 million with the Santa Fe-based Pecos River Learning Centers for a whole range of developmental training, beginning with the outdoor learning. DuPont's plan is for 22,000 employees - that's "all of us in Fibers," says Nix - to complete the training by October of this year.

"When you think about the development of that many people," Nix says, $25 million is a very cost-effective investment." And, according to Nix, DuPont's multimillion-dollar figure includes the cost of all the extras: transportation to five remote training facilities, food, lodging...