Team Building Activities

December 12, 2022

HR Insights
Brought to you by:
Custom Benefit Consultants, Inc.

Team-Building Activities

Introducing team-building activities into your work agendas can make excellent business sense. Team-building activities have the power to bring your employees together and give them a strong sense of direction for the future. 

Team building activities are particularly effective within a team or department that frequently interact and cooperate during the workday. If you develop activities that align with your business objectives and future plans, you can create positive experiences that can benefit your work environment beyond the exercises.

Some ideas include:

• A ropes course 
• A challenging hike in which employees must navigate themselves to an end location 
• A scavenger hunt 
• Cook-Off 
• Office Trivia 
• A company Olympics challenge 

Here is a list of additional ideas you may try with your team: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/creative-team-outing-ideas

A Successful Game Plan

To succeed in your team-building activities, you must have clearly defined objectives and expectations for all parties involved. Ultimately, the success of these activities is contingent on a well-articulated plan that aligns the activities with your organization’s goals. Consider the following planning guidelines:

• Develop a team to plan the events, including identifying which team(s) would benefit from such activities, getting buy-in from management, and choosing appropriate activities. Be sure this team understands how team-building activities should relate to your company’s objectives.
• Only conduct team-building activities with departments that act as a team or operate as a unit. They must share a common purpose, vision, mission, and performance development system that promotes growth. A team-building activity is not beneficial if employees are solely valued and rewarded based on their individual contributions.
• Ensure employees understand the benefits and goals of team-building activities, so they do not see them as a waste and can apply the concepts to their daily work.
• Evaluate activities and adapt as needed. Talking to employees and managers to gather opinions on the usefulness of activities or ideas for changes is essential.

Team Building Cautions

Team building is not for every organization or even every individual department. Avoid these blunders when trying to bond your employees:

• If your organization rewards individuals for their goal achievements and efforts rather than encouraging team efforts, then team-building may foster cynicism about the organization and its perception of what is most valued.
• If you hold a meaningful team-building retreat but do not follow up with activities within the confines of the workplace or explain how the activity relates to daily work, this may harm employee morale and downgrade the importance of the activity. You must show employees how the team-building activity will help them get better at their jobs or strengthen co-worker relationships and remind them of that message frequently in the workplace. If events are not followed up on or placed in the proper context, employees may see them as a waste of time.

If you have a well-defined purpose and plan, team-building activities can be very beneficial for your organization and the productivity of your employees.

Brought to you by the insurance professionals at Custom Benefit Consultants, Inc.

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