Every eighteen months, the Actuarial & Benefits (A&B) practice holds an away day to have some team fun for an afternoon. Since we have about a hundred people in the practice, we were split into two groups and went on separate days. This year, we were told that the main activity would involve ‘archery tag’, which I was curious but also excited about!

We started the day off with a light lunch, followed by some team-building exercises led by Parul, our Learning & Development business partner. In small groups of about six, we first had to build a tower using lego blocks within five minutes. It sounds easy, but there was a catch: each member of the team was given individual instructions, but is not allowed to say directly to the rest of the team what those instructions are. For example, I was the only one allowed to actually build the tower, while other team members were told how many blocks I had to use and what colours they had to be. My team did pretty well and finished within the time limit, but were unfortunately beaten by another team!

After that, we discussed what qualities we think a successful team has, by ordering some statements by importance. It was interesting to see that some view organisation and planning to be very important, while others might put emphasis on building personal relationships and having fun. I also thought it was a great opportunity to get to know those I don’t work with regularly more.

Then came the fun part: archery! It turns out there were two activities. The ‘archery tag’ was basically dodgeball using bows and marshmallow-headed arrows – very intense! We did have to wear safety masks and could hide behind two inflatable ‘shelters’, but we were otherwise pretty exposed to getting shot. Some of us were better at aiming than others, so it made for some pretty hilarious action (with occasionally painful consequences). The target practice, which was just normal archery, was a lot calmer. Now that we weren’t shooting at each other we could develop proper technique, and we did have some high scorers.

And what better way to wrap up the day than to head to the pub across the road and warm ourselves up!