After employees were injured after a fire walking incident on an outward bound course, we wonder why employers still think these activities build team spirit.

	Those managers who thought this an excellent way to foster leadership skills were conspicuous by their absence.	THE £60,000-a-year bond trader could not fathom how being left in a cave soaking wet and blindfolded was going to make him a better salesman and a happier colleague. His employers had paid £500 for Peter Murray to take part in an outdoor development course in the Lake District and made it clear that if he wanted his annual bonus he would be wise to attend. As a final challenge Murray, 35, and nine dishevelled and hungry colleagues were abandoned in the cave, told to wait an hour and then find their way back in the dark. In his report on this week-long adventure in the wild, Murray wrote that he would resign rather than endure such misery again. He also pointed out that those managers who thought this an excellent way to foster leadership skills were conspicuous by their absence when he and his team were wading across a swollen river with a field gun on their shoulders. "I don't see how me pretending to be in the SAS for a week helps me to make money, or living on just a Mars Bar for a day is going to bond me to my colleagues. I hated them all by the end of the week." Murray escaped with cuts and a twisted knee and was thus more fortunate than the seven trainee life insurance sales staff from Cheltenham who ended up in hospital this week after being asked to walk barefoot across a tray of burning coals at the end of their "motivational course". Their employer, Eagle Star Life, agreed with some embarrassment yesterday that "a trial by fire seemed a bit harsh for new recruits". A spokesman said: "This was the first time we had used this activity company and we will be reviewing whether to hire it again. Previous courses have been a great success." Big-name companies are estimated to be spending £550 million a year dragooning staff on to activity courses which occupational psychologists claim build team spirit and foster a more harmonious working environment.
	"A trial by fire seemed a bit harsh for new recruits. We will be reviewing."	The more sedentary your job, the more likely you are to find yourself dressed in fatigues tackling an assault course. Philippa Cowell, 23, a human resources manager, nearly drowned on her activity weekend in Wales recently and promptly persuaded her company to drop the idea for future recruits. "I was taken in by the psycho guff but it's only a few who love all that stuff, so why force everyone? Firms say it's voluntary but you have to be pretty brave to say no." The problem seems to be that companies seek outlandish challenges to test their employees' mettle. Firewalking is growing in popularity as a way of showing your motivation (the trick apparently is to let nervous participants think that the coals are scorching when, in fact, they have been left to cool for so long that they acquire a layer of insulating ash). Some courses persuade staff to undress in front of each other "to get rid of inhibitions and shyness" and then say what they think of the boss while he sits opposite them in his Y-fronts. Guy Baker, the managing director of Catalyst Event Management which designs activity courses, says: "This sort of cod psychology in the name of outdoor training is, frankly, money for old rope." When Microsoft asked Baker to devise an activity for a recent conference, he turned 350 people into a fully working samba orchestra in two hours. He then hired a troupe of Irish dancers to perform to the Microsoft beat. He explains that the firewalking exercise is favoured by practitioners of NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, which, rather predictably, is a science borrowed from American boardrooms. The idea is to reprogramme the way your brain receives information. After an intensive course of at least ten 12-hour days, participants are invited to a spectacular finale which involves firewalking, breaking bricks with bare hands or group hypnosis when, through auto-suggestion, you get colleagues to respond to your commands.
	"This sort of cod psychology in the name of outdoor training is money for old rope."	Wayne Moss, an event management broker for Jarvis Woodhouse, offers clients "The Bomb Programme". Teams have to compete in a muddy version of television's Crystal Maze on a 20-acre woodland where they abseil, build bridges and cross streams to collect enough clues for them to defuse a bomb. "The trend is for companies to offer these 'participation days' rather than just take you for a drink at Henley or Ascot. Surely it's more beneficial and more fun to fly a Tiger Moth in the morning and then drive a tank in the afternoon instead of watching a Test match?" says Moss. Jane Moreland, the business development manager of Outward Bound Professional, says: "In the field you can practise being a leader and it gives someone a greater opportunity to experiment than in an office." She tailors courses for firms such as Unilever, which uses the activities to test if its graduate trainees are made of the right stuff. For those whose employers are intent on them attending some sort of course, then consider that two recent innovations involve spending a weekend making and then eating a box of chocolates. Even more attractive is the suggestion of a corporate wine challenge where you are invited to test vintages and blend your own. A hangover is a better prospect than burnt feet.