If team-building activities are too frequent and low in quality, and they always take up holiday time, most employees will resent it and complain that it's better to give the money directly as a bonus, especially those with families.
In some small companies, there are even strange bosses who crowdfund for team-building. They must really want to run the company into the ground.
But in many large companies, the operations of many things are a bit like an official agency with budget allocations, including specific activity funds that cannot be distributed directly to employees if not used.
Gao Xue'e is a leader who also prefers organizing team-building, but since the Cloud Living Business Group has always been a relatively marginal department, she exercises restraint, and the frequency of team-building is not high, mostly under the guise of welcoming newcomers in the past six months.
When work is busy, it's nothing more than a dinner gathering in the evening. If work is not too busy and there are no new employees, the department basically has an outdoor activity once a month.
This time, the activity is coincidentally sponsored by a partner.
The Bada Group is a large enterprise in Qi Yuan, with industries involving culture, tourism, entertainment, and real estate. It has a five-star hotel in Qi Yuan City, and the hotel's annex is a health club.
The club has four floors. The first floor is a standard swimming pool and indoor water amusement projects. The second floor has a buffet restaurant, a chess and card room, family cinema, game rooms, etc., suitable for parties or large-scale immersive games.
The third floor has various themed guest rooms offering spa and wellness services, with suite living rooms equipped with KTV facilities, like entertainment rooms with bedrooms and bathrooms.
The fourth floor has various fitness equipment, along with dance, yoga, and body shaping studios equipped with instructors. Why is the gym on the fourth floor? Because you can move around in a bathrobe from the first to the third floor, it's convenient.
The bathrobes come in long versions and two-piece home-style versions.
The positioning of the Bada Health Club is to provide safe and healthy fitness leisure and social entertainment services for high-end customers. It's a membership-based club, and membership cards are quite expensive.
But in recent years, business has been hard to manage, with sales shrinking significantly. Fitness centers and entertainment venues outside have been closing in batches, and the larger and more high-end the place, the greater the impact.
The Bada Club uses its group's property and doesn't have to pay rent, which barely keeps it afloat. With a slight market recovery recently, they have to quickly find ways to regain losses.
Cancel membership thresholds, or discount and sell at a low price? This would ruin their high-end brand, so they can only offer deals through other means, by promotional cooperation and development.
The Bada Group also has its own promotional department, but it recently downsized and outsourced the promotional business to a media company. This media company had already cooperated with the Tengxin Qi Yuan Branch, so they naturally connected and planned an event.
They launched a new co-branded membership card, not discounted or sold but given for free. All 500 employees of the Qi Yuan Branch each received a co-branded card with a free three-month trial.
In these three months, except for personal training, use of private boxes, and in-room services, all other services, including buffets at the club, are free, and entertainment and fitness facilities are also fully free to use.
This is the same as the treatment of guests staying in the neighboring five-star hotel.
Their goal is to get enough "high-end customers" in first, then make some money from the paid projects.
After the three-month period, if someone continues to recharge, they would directly become VIP members, potentially retaining some customers at that time.
So He Kao also became a guest member at the Bada Health Club, free to play for three months. People like him were not the original target of the club's development, but the club now has no choice but to lower its standards.
What the club is eyeing is that the employees here have relatively high incomes, and many have the spending power, just that they're usually so reclusive they don't bother to go out, so opportunities have to be created to provide them with services.
The media company was very thoughtful and also provided each department with a free experience opportunity of a guest room and box, allowing them to stay overnight, perfect for team-building.
This requires each department to make a reservation in advance and confirm the number of people so that arrangements can be made. Gao Xue'e was thrilled when she heard and quickly made a reservation.
Department employees were also very welcoming of this, as they'd already received the three-month membership card, so why not go and try it out? Huang Xiaopang was particularly happy, even a bit excited, because this team-building was sure to involve swimming.
He was proficient in swimming since childhood, known as the Little White Dragon of the river. There are several girls and women in the department in great shape, and normally there's no chance to see them in swimsuits, especially President E.
Upon hearing the news, Qian Guran couldn't help but praise the heavens for helping him, saving him the trouble of coming up with something.
On Sunday, He Kao participated in the project group's team-building at the Bada Club. Upon entry, it wasn't much different from a bath center, with separate male and female entrances, just with fancier decor and facilities.
The changing room allows you to change into swimwear and head for the water on the first floor, or change into sports attire and head straight to the fitness on the fourth floor. President E asked everyone to gather on the first floor. There are lounge chairs and round tables by the pool, and further out are partitions with tables and chairs inside.
The business unit occupied three partitions for everyone's bathrobes, towels, phones, etc. Colleagues who don't go in the water can just hang out there and play on their phones or games.
He Kao changed into his swim trunks and walked out with his phone, passing through the shower area to the corridor, intending to grab a bathrobe and towel when a staff member reminded him, "Sir, you need to wear a swim cap in the water, and take off the pendant around your neck."
Growing up, it was He Kao's first time entering an indoor pool. He had only swum in the river and reservoir in his hometown. Although Qi Yuan University also had a pool, He Kao had never visited it, and others viewed him as a typical techie.
So he didn't know these rules, just accepted what the staff said, and bought a swim cap at the service center, and put the pendant in his locker.
As he walked towards the pool, he could see Huang Xiaopang waving at him from a distance: "He Kao, over here."
He Kao walked to the department's gathering area, Xiaopang was waving his arms doing what was possibly his own invented warm-up, and loudly said to He Kao, "Want to race down there?"
Not far away, Qian Guran mumbled, "You can bring your phone here too, so I'll go get mine." He then left the lounge area and returned to the changing room.
Opening this kind of locker was no effort for Qian Guran, he did it naturally as if he was taking his own stuff, gesturing with his hand key and then quickly taking the pendant away.
He headed directly to the third floor, into a pre-booked guest room, and once inside, he took out the prepared items and tools, mainly a feline beast's claw, shaped and sized almost identical to He Kao's.
The upper end of the beast claw had a small hole drilled into it, tied with an old string of the same color, same style. Qian Guran now needed to adjust the color and texture, aiming to make the fake indistinguishable from the real.
He is a sorcerer from the Qi Observation Sect, not the Micro Realm Sect, but with a Tier Three level, many techniques from different sects have some intersections and reference points. Given his preparation, crafting this small item wasn't difficult.
He Kao's beast claw was evidently polished and had years of handling, its texture showing bright yellow, slightly translucent, its surface without obvious scratches or color blotches, almost perfectly matching the fake Qian Guran prepared, saving quite a bit of trouble.
An hour later, Qian Guran placed the two pendants on a tray. An ordinary person, whether by eye or touch, could hardly tell the difference.
But Qian Guran knew these two items had very large, almost inconceivable differences. When he first held He Kao's beast claw, he discerned it was at least a magical artifact.
**