I have a roughly 50% win rate on this personally. (When talking about the companies I’ve worked for.)

Some of them horrible, some of them wonderful, some in the middle.

Unless there was exceptional reasons for it, it's a surefire way to make your best talent resentful. All these "company retreat" type things are concocted by HR-types justifying their own paycheck. It's anti-leadership.

I wouldn’t do it on a Monday morning, that’s for sure.

Having worked for a few companies that don’t have the ‘HR types justifying their own paycheck’.. it IS possible to find a positive environment. The one thing they’ve all had in common was a sub-100 head count.

It's not about the environment, it's about spending 4 hours listening to executives talk. If there's that much important material to cover, it should be written down.