The success of your business depends largely on the team that keeps it running. If everyone works well together, it can be like a well-oiled machine. On the other hand, if there’s discord in the office, then that machine can easily grind to a halt.
The best way to keep things running smoothly is to make sure that employee morale is high so that people feel more comfortable and secure in their work. As well as ensuring that individual employees are happy, you also need to make sure that they can work as a team. This is where team-building comes into play.
What is Team Building?
In short, team building is the process wherein a group of individuals is forged into a cohesive team that can work together to meet the needs of the company and customers. Team building can occur every day as employees interact with each other. As they spend more time together, they’ll learn what makes the others tick and, ideally, how to act appropriately in the group. This is passive team building and it happens naturally.
Active team building is more deliberate, often involving a series of meetings that will encourage employees to get to know each other. They can include structured activities and exercises led by certain team members or at an external facility.
Potential Team Building Pitfalls
Team building exercises and activities sometimes have a bad reputation. If you mention it to your employees, they may think of an awkward half-day spent doing trust falls without any real explanation. Even worse, they may have horror stories about team building exercises gone terribly wrong, perhaps resulting in an injury.
Another potential pitfall is to ignore the context of the day and how the exercises apply to business applications entirely. This results in a fun day, sure, but with no real benefit to your employees or the company. You should instead aim to focus the team building, while still having fun. Company fun days are helpful, but you should know the difference.
Team Building Ideas
One of the simplest ways to facilitate team building is to arrange for a meal, either an informal company picnic or a sit-down meal. This is particularly beneficial if your employees eat separately at work, as the act of eating together has been known to help people to bond. This is a less focused and active activity, but it can be nice at times for your employees to relax.
If possible, your employees may be willing to take on challenges for charity. Not only will they have to overcome a challenge together, but they will be doing it for a good cause. However, many of these challenges are physically taxing, so some staff members may find them more difficult. If you do want to offer physical activities, then don’t pressure people to join in.
However, virtual reality simulations might be more accessible, and they allow people to attempt different challenges together. Smaller groups of employees might enjoy escape rooms, real or virtual, which force them to work together to reach their goals.
