Creating a healthy and collaborative work environment is of the utmost importance when it comes to running a business. Despite most businesses understanding the importance and benefits of team building, many do not understand how they can promote teamwork and develop a positive company culture.
Thankfully, there are easy ways in which you can implement team building activities and programs into your work schedule which will ensure that your employees get a chance to develop essential team based skills to improve the efficiency of your business.
What is the main purpose of team building?
The main purpose of team building is to establish and build on relationships between employees. Once these essential relationships are established and fostered, communication skills develop and allow individuals to feel comfortable to express their feelings and concerns.
When people feel like they can talk about feelings and concerns in the workplace, it highlights both their own strengths and weaknesses and more importantly, allows them to voice their thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of other team members. All of this together has the effect of improving efficiency and increasing productivity.
Essentially through the relationships it fosters and the skills it develops, team building helps to create high-performing teams who can work together effectively in order to increase positive team performance and ensure the overall success of a business.
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Why team building and teamwork go hand in hand
Team building and teamwork go hand in hand as together they lead to better communication, improve the productivity of employees, and help identify team leaders.
Leads to better communication
The development of communication skills is one of the most direct and important benefits of team building activities. One of the biggest barriers to open communication is a lack of comfort, which is not helped with the formality of a workspace. Removing employees from this space encourages them to feel more comfortable in their surroundings and therefore open up more.
Once you open these lines of communication outside the working environment, it will likely translate into the office space. Moreover, as team building helps you learn more about your colleagues, it will also help you understand what is the best way to communicate with them.
Improves productivity
Team building activities encourage participants to get to know one another to eventually work more effectively as a team. If communication is improved, it will have a positive effect on productivity as they can share what they need to get done in an explicit manner and improve workflow.
Team building also helps to ensure that all workers are on the same page. This subsequently leads to a harmonious common vision business wide, with everyone working towards the same goal.
Helps to identify team leaders
Although the main aim of team building activities is to encourage coherence between team members and the emphasis is placed upon the teams themselves, it can also be useful for those higher up in the company to identify who will work best as team leaders.
Because team building exercises are aimed at changing and disrupting the working environment in an exterior setting, it affords those who would not usually be leaders to take on leadership roles as they go through different activities. This might therefore highlight leadership skills in those whom you might not have initially considered as leaders.
How do you conduct a team building activity?
To conduct a team building activity you need to:
- Schedule it during work hours
- Consider virtual team building
- Go offsite
- Get outside help
Many businesses fail to implement team building activities simply because they do not have the knowledge on how to run them. In order to minimize the research you might have to do to learn how to conduct team building activities, we have created this list of expert tips to help you.
1. Schedule it during work hours
This is a key aspect of team building activities that many companies get wrong because they don’t want to eat into working time. Many businesses choose to schedule mandatory team building exercises outside of working hours, which simply makes employees bitter because they are being taken away from precious family time or the only down time they have for themselves.
If you want your employees to truly engage with the activities and get the most out of the team building activities you have planned, it’s best to schedule it during work hours. Despite the short term working time that you lose, it will pay off in the long term as it will increase productivity through the development of rapport.
2. Consider virtual team building activities
The idea of virtual team building activities have only really emerged since the pandemic as it was the only way for remote teams to benefit from the team building process. However, it is actually an extremely efficient and practical set up, especially for businesses who have teams and employees working all over the world.
This is especially useful when you want employees on the ground as well as those higher up to all be involved in team building activities. This is also a way to make it accessible for everyone as the types of activities that occur during online team building are rarely physically demanding.
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3. Go offsite
Removing employees and team members from the office for team building activities is a great way to ensure everyone feels fully immersed in the activities and do not feel constrained to work life. The aim of team building is to allow members to bond outside of a working environment, so if you are in the physical working space of your employees, they will struggle to turn off their brains in order to be fully committed to the team building.
However, if you take employees elsewhere, to a neutral location, it will encourage them to shed some of their working personas to allow everyone to get to know each other on a more personal level, which will improve overall relationships.
4. Get outside help
The best way to run a team building activities program is to get outside help from an agency that specializes in team building. Companies such as KronosXP offer turnkey solutions to team building programs. At the end of the day, big and small companies alike often do not have the time to plan team building events, which is why an agency such as KronosXP is your perfect ally to organize everything.
One of the best features about KronosXP’s team building services is the fact that they work alongside you to help create a program that will maximize the benefits to your employees. Moreover, once an itinerary has been planned and created, our team curates a custom webpage that you can share with your team with all the relevant information to succinctly get everyone involved, while also creating buzz around the event.
We offer a series of well thought out activities which are guaranteed to create lasting bonds and memories. Ultimately, hiring an agency to organize your team building program will allow you to reap all the benefits that team building can provide as it will develop integral skills, increase collaboration and strengthen relationships between employees.