Library away days: home wins or own goals?

Abstract

Love them or loathe them, away days have become an integral part of the library calendar. Away days may form a crucial part of employee engagement if used wisely. At their worst, away days are embarressing and reinforce a negative opinion of the organisation; at best, they can transform organisational performance and inject fresh enthusiasm into a project or team. At the University of Lincoln an away day for library staff revolved around an innovative concept of the World Cafe, a forum to debate a staff survey topic within an alloted amount of time before moving onto another topic. This formulated a credible grass-roots response to important issues in the library