If you have a business and you have people working for you or beside you, you might be wondering about ways to bring the team together, boost morale, and have a little fun with them. One of the ways you can go about this is to try team building exercises and activities. Depending on what you want to do, your location and what venues are available – you can do indoor or outdoor activities, in office or out of office, as well as regular team building exercises i.e.; trust falls, or something a little more fun and adventurous like kayaking, culinary events or zip lining. The question here shouldn’t really be IS team building important, but rather why it’s important. Below, you will find a list of just some of the reasons why team building is so important and different benefits that it can bring to your company and your team.
Fun Activities
Depending on your job, work can be a really fun and gratifying experience. But, even the most dedicated worker can sometimes get burnt out and they need a break – even if just for a day. Combining both work and play is a great way to create team building events. Team building activities are about working with a team to create a positive outcome. It doesn’t matter if you are having a cooking contest, driving formula 1 race cars, or you are doing standup comedy – the end goal is to have fun and to have your team members working together. Disguising work as fun might seem like a juvenile thing to do, but I don’t care if you are 3, 30 or 100 years old, disguising work as playtime always works with anyone!
Ice breakers
If you have recently hired on a few new employees and you sort of see an awkward transition going on between old workers versus new workers, this might be the perfect ice breaker you were looking for. In some office settings, new workers are often needed, but not always automatically accepted into the group right away. In order to resolve this, try finding ice breakers like an event, tasting, or competition that your entire team can get involved with – just make sure you try and split the teams up with a mix of both old team mates and new so that everyone can equally work with each other to reach their end goal. This build team trust as well. And it gets your entire team a chance to get to know the new employees in a non-office setting.
Increased and Better Communication
When you have an event or an activity that requires collaboration, teamwork among employees, negotiation and of course competition, you will start to see your team working with each other, rather than against, and you will begin to see them communicate more often and in a new way. Hands on activities include things like kayaking, canoeing, boat building, car building, etc. A corporate events venue will not only have a place for you to do your activity, but they should be able to set everything up for you, depending on the activity you want to do. Some of these events offer specialized programs i.e.; culinary programs and they should have the tools and equipment to allow your team members to use these tools and equipment to complete their task.
Motivation
Money is great and its fine when it comes time to promote someone or give them a raise, but there are also other ways to increase morale and motivate people to continue to do well in their position. You’d be surprised at just how happy your employees will be with a pat on the back, a cheer from the crowd, or a trinket for winning an activity or competition. It’s not always about money folks, sometimes it’s just about showing appreciation for your workers and allowing them to be compensated in other ways. If you really want to increase motivation, consider doing something different than anything mentioned above. How about volunteering? That always makes people feel good – both the people doing it and the people receiving the service.
