Outdoor Training - Definition & Meaning

What is Outdoor Training?

Outdoor Training is a method of training employees outdoors through activities, games, tasks etc through physical activities which helps in team building, strategy making, personality development, crisis management etc. Outdoor Training is very different from other forms of training in the sense that the mangers participate with his/her employees instead of managers leading the session. This helps to break the ice between the two and establishes a sense of comfort between the employees and their managers.

 

Companies started such training in the early 80s, with an aim to focus on developing team spirit among managers and employees. It emerged as one of the few big HR ideas in the 90s, as it combines the hands on practical experience and the typical training consisting of a challenging but safe physical activities.

Types of Outdoor games:

• Biking

• Camping

• Rock climbing

• Rappelling

• Water skiing

• Canoeing

• Team challenges

• Strategic games

• Trekking

Types of skills learnt:

• Problem solving

• Teamwork

• Risk taking

• Inter personal communication

• Self esteem

Advantages of outdoor training:

• Employees and upper level management are able to blend, learn and have fun together, making the learning stress free

• It provides hands on experience and a practical learning to all the employees

• It helps participants to overcome their flaws and limitations

• It improves the trust among the team members an enhances the team building experience

• It helps to bring out the true self and the actual attitude, feelings and behavior of an employee which may not come to notice when working indoors.

Disadvantages of outdoor training:

• It has a bad rapport in the sense that it is all fun and no work.

• Everybody doesn’t participates in outdoor training

• Have to consider the beliefs, culture and attitudes of all those involved

• Some people may not be comfortable with the touching involved in these outdoor trainings as they consider touching to be invasion of privacy

• It may be discriminating against physically challenged and older employees

• Outdoor training is very expensive, leading to incurring heavy costs

• Employees might have difficulty connecting what they learnt outdoors and what they do indoors

Hence, this concludes the definition of Outdoor Training along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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