What do you get when you take a pack of co-workers with no curling experience and stick them on a curling sheet? The latest corporate team-building exercise.
It may be due to the Olympic limelight or it may simply be the sport’s growing mainstream appeal, but corporate curling is taking off at Lower Mainland rinks.
Part of the trend may relate to the fact that, while curling is growing in popularity, there’s a good chance that if you collect a handful of employees and hand them a broom and a slide shoe, the majority of them will be lost as to what to do next.
In the latter scenario, curling can act as the great corporate leveller: in what other environment can you have a senior manager slip-sliding around on ice, making as much a fool of him or herself as the average-Joe employee?
When Vancouver’s Pan Pacific Hotel took 20 of its employees for a half-day of curling last month at the Vancouver Curling Club, 19 of the employees had no curling experience.
“Everyone was on the same level,” said Rishad Daroowala, Pan Pacific’s marketing and social media co-ordinator. “No one was superior or inferior, and we were all learning as a team.”
In addition to its regular company picnics and weekly or monthly intramural sports like softball, Pan Pacific looks for something new and unique to do with employees at least twice a year.
That’s where curling – and earlier this year, dog-sledding – came in.
“We’ve all played hockey before, but not many people get an opportunity to go curling,” said Daroowala. “You’re taking some of the relationships that you build in the office and taking them outside the office.”
West Vancouver’s Hollyburn Country Club hosted eight corporate curling events last winter season. In the initial weeks of this curling season, the club has already booked 15 and expects to book more.
Ed McLaughlin, Hollyburn’s CEO, said the club packages its curling rental as a “corporate play day.”
In addition to the four curling sheets, corporate rentals can include extras like meeting rooms where companies can host workshops or guest speakers.
“It’s a very social sport,” said McLaughlin. “You can shoot the breeze, have a good time and can still talk because, unlike other sports, you can still breathe while you’re curling.”
For a full-day corporate curling event, which includes meeting space, planning and breakfast and lunch, Hollyburn charges $40 a head.
For curling only, the cost is $40 a curling sheet or $60 a sheet with lessons.
McLaughlin said that curling is becoming particularly popular among a younger demographic, which makes it an ideal corporate event as the younger workforce replaces the boomers.
At the Vancouver Curling Club, curling rentals increased 1,500% last winter season, with roughly 300 companies renting out space.
“We were cancelling leagues in order to fill corporate interests last year,” said VCC general manager and Paralympic curling gold-medallist Chris Daw.
The curling rink now generates five-figure revenue from corporate rentals.
Part of the growth is due to Daw’s own efforts to build the rink’s revenue beyond that generated from the weekly teams that it counts as members. But Daw also attributes the sport’s growth to the coverage it received during the Olympics and the fact that it’s no longer an old-boys club.
He expects corporate traction to only increase as the club moves into its new year-round rink this fall.
“Curling encompasses all the theories that corporations are wanting to use as team-building foundations,” said Daw. That includes teamwork, strategic organization, problem-solving and social interaction, he added.
“And you don’t have to go out and sweat your tail off in order for people to have fun,” he said, referring to the popularity of outdoor adventures as corporate events.
A half-day rental for curling at VCC costs $1,000 plus tax and includes access to five sheets of ice, equipment rentals, basic pre-session off-ice and on-ice instruction and access to the lobby, bar and lounge.
A full-day rental with the same extras costs $1,500 plus tax.
And a day at the curling rink can include business, too.
Some companies have hosted their annual general meetings or business workshops at the rink. Daw said that companies have brought up to 90 employees to the rink for a day of curling.
Curling clubs are particularly conducive to larger groups, he said, because a group can be broken into smaller teams and rotated through different activities.
While one team is meeting for a business workshop, for example, another can be curling on the rink, while another can be getting an off-ice lesson.
“And it allows the boss to come out and embarrass themselves like everyone else,” said Daw. “It allows the boss to show they have personality, if necessary.”