GUEST COMMENT: Debauched offsites RIP
If you have spent any time in an investment bank, you will know that there is nothing as fatuous and debauched as the company offsite.
Fundamentally, the offsite has one purpose: drinking alcohol.
However, it is not acceptable to present a bill to accounts comprised solely of a large bar tab. Therefore, the offsite consists of a large bar tab, plus something else. That something else is usually, but not exclusively, a pointless physical activity: go-karting/ten pin bowling/bungee jumping etc.
My personal least favourite offsite involves paintballing. Favoured by the uber-aggressive nutter boss who considers it fun to spray globs of paint over your groin, it is both demeaning and pointless.
To avoid the offsite is, however, to commit career suicide. Last time we went paintballing, a colleague came along who'd been working 100 hour weeks and was on the verge of hospitalisation. Any sane person would have avoided the experience. He felt compelled to attend. Fortuitously, he suffered a self-inflicted leg injury early in the event and was able to sit on the sidelines. He'd shown his face, which was enough.
It is with some delight, therefore, that I predict the debauched offsite is becoming an anachronism. In the austerity era, debauchery is inappropriate. Corporate Social
Responsibility is in; raucous drinking, karaoke, and lewd behaviour, are out.
Bankers need to be seen to make amends.
In the new climate of penitence, painting community centres will take the place of paintballing.
There will be less alcohol, there will be less leering; don't even think about trying to out do your boss when you're tarting up a youth centre in Tower Hamlets.
Banking needs to be seen as a caring sharing profession. Like it or not, offsites are at the vanguard of that transformation. We are all community workers now.
The author is a private equity professional who formerly worked in M&A.
