I don't remember hearing the phrase 'away day' until about 15 years ago.  Perhaps they had taken place before then but I was unaware of them.  When we had significant discussions in my department, for example about curriculum change, we set up a small group (what we would now call a 'task and finish' group - although that was another phrase we didn't use at the time) and they reported to a normal staff meeting.

The first away day I remember being involved in took place at Whirlow Conference Centre on Ecclesall Road South.  Since then I've attended a number of others, the most exotic destination being Hassop Hall.  But I remember arriving at Cagliari Airport in Sardinia some years ago to attend a conference at the university and discovering that most of the other passengers on my flight from Gatwick were employees of Richard Branson's Virgin businesses on their way to a 2-day 'away day' in a beach resort.  As far as I know the University has never run to that sort of event, although I have heard of departments (in the past!) going to Scarborough.

Today I was at an awayday at Halifax Conference Centre on Endcliffe Vale Road, and I found that there were other similar events to the one I was attending going on there as well.  In total quite a lot of people from around the university were engaged in 'awaydaying'.  A question that occurs to me is whether the expense of using a day is ultimately worth it.  'Work expands to fill the time available' is sometimes called 'Parkinson's Law'.  If that 'law' is true it would be interesting to evaluate the results of awaydays against the question of whether they could be achieved in a shorter time period - such as a normal meeting. 

Once upon a time I worked out the value of an hour's staff time for various grades of staff, and wrote the list up as a table in the front of my notepad.  I'd then occasionally look round a group of people in a discussion and work out roughly how much the session was costing.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a generally linear relationship whereby the most expensive meetings were dealing with the least important matters - and vice versa.  Although I have certainly been involved in some very productive away days in my time, and today's was of consdierable interest, I remain to be convinced that they are all of value.   Yet they have became a standard part of the university's toolkit of collaborative discussion and decision-making.