At Large: Weekend warriors play hard at the corporate game: 'It really brings us together. We are all very competitive, because of our job, and we play to win. We're already in training'

Milton Keynes is expecting a persuasion of motivational experts to invade the town this June. Clipboards in hand, they will scurry from Bletchley Leisure Centre to Silverstone, from Stony Stratford Lawn Tennis Club to the Grand Union Canal. Employee relations theory is being rewritten, and they will not want to miss it.

Those heron-like fishermen on the turbid canal's banks may be surprised to hear they are making history. But as they concentrate on a tiny float, they will play a vital role in making their company a leader in corporate relations, enhancing productivity, creating employee confidence and loyalty - never mind reducing absenteeism, cutting healthcare costs, building self-image and feeling the growth of unity and pride.

I've never quite seen roach, perch and gudgeon in those terms. But we're talking blue-chips who know the score here. IBM, British Airways, Texaco, Midland Bank, Nationwide Building Society, Olivetti, Laing Homes and Unisys: they have more management consultants than most companies have staff. If they are playing, then there must be more to the UK and Ireland Corporate Games than the lads from dispatch clogging everyone at football.

This will be the second year of the British games, though the World Games, scheduled for Johannesburg this October, is in its seventh term. More than 2,800 from 230 companies took part in last year's British event, and the organisers hope for at least 4,000 this year. 'It is proving successful because it taps an untapped market,' said the media director David Butler, one of eight full-time staff now spreading the Corporate word.

It is arguable quite what that market is. It may be transferring the natural competitiveness of business to the sports arena; it may be the chance for ordinary people to take part nationally in their sport; it may be just the opportunity to kick seven bells out of a few accountants or bank managers. One facet is the fact that you don't actually have to be very good.

'This is not really for elite athletes, though there are quite a few of them,' Butler said. 'It is sport for the weekend warrior.' So even the rules for eligibility are deliberately loose. There is no minimum standard.

To make things even fairer, there are men's and women's sections, six age classes up to 60-plus (at 79, the triathlete Patrick Barnes from British Airways will probably be the oldest) and the team competition is split by entry numbers. So Texaco, which entered 120 people last year and hopes to have 250 come June, will be matched with similarly sized squads rather than the team of one from a Norwich coffee shop or a Cornish law firm. Honorary presidents such as Andy Ripley, Tony Doyle, Laura Davies and David Lloyd will monitor the 17 sports (new this year: match angling, cycling and basketball).

Archer Leisure, a company that provides and runs health clubs from Sheffield to Plymouth, will be taking it rather more seriously. Even the managing director, Harm Tegelars, will be taking part (at squash) and the squad of 120 will include Sam Kabiswa, a cleaner, who runs for Uganda at 100 metres and 200m. Kabiswa won both events at the World Games in London two years ago.

The business manager, Steve Davies, who will be spearheading the Surreybased company's efforts this year, is a former county badminton player who confessed that he was surprised at the standard of competition in many events. 'I was knocked out of the badminton in the semi-finals, but when I took part in the World Games, I was beaten in the second round by a Chinese who took me apart. If you win a medal, you've done very well.'

Archer, which hopes to enter at least 120 this year, sees the event as an excellent way of uniting a diversified company. 'It really brings us together. We are all very competitive, because of our job, and we play to win. We're already in training.'

At UK level, it is largely a fun weekend, though the event hopes to raise pounds 100,000 for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. But at the World Games, held in glamorous venues such as Honolulu and Kuala Lumpur, there is a serious side too. Several companies tied up significant deals and Charles Schwab, a US stockbroker, reckons it did more business during the Hawaii games than at any other time in the year. This year's world event, involving some 10,000 competitors, is tied to an international trade exhibition that will be opened by South Africa's new president.

There will be seminars on small business, investment and tax opportunities - but nothing on Herzberg's theory of motivation, inspiring and building teams or other management-babble strategies. If you're taking part, you don't need them.