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Trek to Your Conferencing Destination
Suited – booted corporate trainers in stuffy board – rooms are passé. Corporate houses are now heading to the outdoors for conferencing and training.
Boardrooms are passé. A martinet of a corporate trainer is oh-so-not-welcome. Training programs are no longer a yawn. When balance sheets are going red – or soaring past the employees need to pull up their socks, they no longer make sermons. Instead, the bosses are asking employees to forget their pin-striped suits and throw away their gels and polished portmanteaus. In come the tees, the floaters, the backpacks, the cargos and the ruffled look. No deadlines and no targets. They all head out of the office to bond and learn unspoilt forests, amid the unending beaches by the icy blue seas.
Get the pictures? That’s outdoor training and conferencing. It is the latest fad and everyone seems to love it. Outdoor conferencing is a business-cum-leisure activity, usually held in camps in secluded jungle of hilly terrains. It could include physical activities like trekking, rappelling, treasure hunts and some times more adventures sports like rafting and rock climbing.
“We had our quarterly conference in Corbett national park. The river, bonfires and safari were truly novelties. Generally, we have our conferences in Mussoorie, Agra and Lukhnow. But this time, at Corbett, the open environs helped us relax and provided one of the best vacations for our families too, Says vijay chaturvedi, dealer development manager, northern region, Tata Motors.
And what are the hottest destinations for outdoor conferencing? Well, Corbett National Park beats them all hands down. It is close to Delhi and has different things for different leanings. There’s wildlife. There’s the Ramganga River. There are mountains. And there are the beautiful nature trails. All this adds variety to one’s outdoor plans.
Another favorite destination is Maneri near Uttarakashi. A large, historic town, Uttarakashi sits by the Bhagirathi River and has innumerable ancient monuments and temples, of which the most famous is the Lord Viswanath temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva. At Maneri, you can trek, climb rocks or rappel.
Its proximity to Nainitial makes Kashipur a hot destination with the head honchos and their packs of employees. Most corporate houses use kashipur as the base camp for major programmes and then head out to Nainital for a day or two of sight-seeing and the usual touristy fun.
If you are at the helm and need your boys and girls to meet targets better, well then forget the lectures and the pep talks. Get out of those suits. Get into the tee. And learn!
- Preeti Verma Lal, Times of India, Monday, June 18, 2007
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