You like your colleagues. You really like your colleagues. You’re normally last to leave after-work drinks, chip in generously for the birthday cake fund and you’re all Facebook friends.
But do you like your colleagues enough to spend five days with them, in the middle of nowhere, rationing water supplies instead of sharing the office fridge milk?
That’s precisely the question posed to four Australian workplaces in new ABC2 series Do or Die. The reality-cum-survival program is led by ‘‘top corporate psychologist’’ Dr Travis Kemp (pictured), who each week dumps a group of seemingly friendly colleagues in the middle of what he calls a ‘‘survival adventure’’.
Forced to quibble over supplies and how to pitch a tent, tension and stress inevitably spills over, resulting in some confronting conversations that won’t be forgotten during the next round of performance reviews.
The first cab off the rank was Sydney cocktail bar Goldfish. Six employees, including alpha-male owners Ben and Dan, set out in last night’s episode on what they believed would be a fun, team-building exercise. They were visibly worried when, motioning towards the outback, Kemp declares ‘‘stuff happens out here’’.
Within minutes, arguments were breaking out about where the group should set up its home base, how long it should take them to run out of water (the answer was mid-afternoon) and exactly how to divvy up a backpack’s worth of food. By the time Kemp left them to their own devices and the group was forced to trek six hours across a salt lake in 38-degree heat, it was almost psychological warfare.
Actor Samuel Johnson provides narration throughout, and the show looks fantastic – almost like a tourism ad for some remote corners of the country. The gist of the gruelling exercise is to encourage openness, honesty, stronger leadership and better lines of communication in the workplace. But, as the before and after interviews prove, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
Next week’s episode features a husband-and-wife-led real estate agency from Perth with a few problems bubbling under the surface.
Keen to avoid your workplace signing up for something like this? Next time, donate a little more to that cake fund. It might just protect your relationship with your colleagues for good.
ABC2, Wednesday, 8.30pm
