How to Effectively Use Team Building Activities
As a business owner or manager, it is important that your employees work together well. Team building activities can help build communication, boost morale, and spark creativity. It can also help to identify strengths and weaknesses within teams and provide avenues to correct them. To ensure the effectiveness of team building exercises, you need to determine what your objective is. Most often it will fall into three areas:
Relationship Building: The well-being of your employees and the company as a whole benefits when working relationships are deeper than a cordial greeting every morning. When you help employees build comaraderie, employee engagement and productivity can rise. According to The HAAS School of Business at UC Berkeley, individuals who believe that the people around them genuinely care are 43% more effective at work. Also, people generally feel more comfortable collaborating with those that they have built relationships with.
Communication Skills: Effective communication between team members is important so that each person knows their role and the roles of others. When communication between employees is good, projects can be completed more efficiently. When there is poor communication or a lack of it, productivity suffers. Because the root of good communication is trust and respect, team building activities can help foster that environment.
Celebrations: Who doesn’t want to be told they have done a good job? Celebrating successes boosts morale and makes everyone feel appreciated. This is yet another way to increase employee engagement and reduce stress.
When choosing team building activities, you’ll want to be mindful that they are inclusive of everyone and are enjoyable. Forcing someone into an activity they don’t like could potentially create adverse effects. Taking into consideration the activity levels of your employees, out of office excursions such as a ropes course, hiking, or escape room activity can help team members bond. Volunteering is another method of boosting morale as people tend to feel better about themselves when they help others and this also gives everyone a common goal.
Finally, it’s important that the activities you choose mirror your company’s values. Team building should be viewed as an investment in your workforce and not just a temporary fix. You will receive back the same energy you give, so make sure your employees understand how much you value their relationships and well-being. Team building activities can help everyone gain perspective as to how each employee fits into the organization and can prove extremely useful in improving both teamwork and collaboration.
