Team building is a common activity in companies of all sizes in the 21st century. We’ve spoken about the benefits of team building before, but in 2019, how can we take a fresh look and ensure that any event you put on is both enjoyable and valuable for your team? Team building is about fostering trust, understanding, and mutual respect in order to improve performance, but they also have to be fun. In this blog post we look at some ways you can keep your team building activities innovative, effective, and exciting.

To get the best ROI and for your employees to feel the benefits of team building, it has to be both interesting and purposeful. We’ll explore some interesting activities in the second half of this post but to begin with let’s look at improving your ROI from team building.

Your own employees are the best people to tell you how they can do their jobs more effectively, as well as if anything is stopping them doing so. So to prevent a team building day that nobody benefits from, ask them. A team survey, circulated via email, can be very effective for this.

For example,results may show a disconnect between how teams work or communicate. Or you might find that an individual’s targets are incompatible with another’s. Conversely, it may be the case that unbeknownst to each other, a by product of Individual A’s work would help Individual B in their role, improving performance across the board.

Once you have this information, you can formulate a plan and devise activities to provide a situation where your team can bond and work together better. Your staff are much more likely to enjoy and engage with team building exercises that they know will help them in their day-to-day role.

At Brightstone we understand how to enable organisations to bond and bring out the best in each other. One of the key barriers to teams growing organically in many organisations is a top down management or communication structure that stifles creativity or free thinking. The best team building activities remove these structures and allow team members of all seniority to work together. In some cases, the results of this cooperation can be ‘game changing’…

Sony’s PlayStation series of games consoles are the most successful ever with over 525 million units sold since 1994. And it came about because a junior employee who’d been tinkering with his daughter’s Nintendo finally got in front of a senior manager who listened to his idea when many others didn’t.

A common mistake of team building experiences is that when everybody returns to work the next day and gets back into their routine, progress can be forgotten. We encourage organisations to continue to put some time aside to allow staff to continue to interact with each other, work on personal projects and continue to interact with people across the team.

Team building days can be as varied and unique as your organisation. They can range from highly organised experiences designed to develop problem solving, co-working abilities and meet specific goals, to less formal, relaxed activities that help your team to engage with each other on a personal level. At Brightstone, we always put together bespoke team building activities which are unique to your organisational goals, but let’s explore a selection of fun ideas you could start exploring today:

Encourage trust with blindfolded taste testing competitions. Your team places their faith in each other to feed them a range of foods and to ensure that their taste buds remain in tact. Encourage friendly competition by splitting into teams and offering a prize.

Few team exercises encourage teamwork and problem solving in a fun environment like an escape room. Often linked to pubs or bars, they’re great for a relaxed and enjoyable team experience away from the office.

These can be as formal or informal as you like but by creating teams, setting a brief, and letting them run with it you can encourage your staff’s natural innovative, collaborative and creative skills to come to the fore. What’s more, these often have direct, applicable results that can be applied in the work environment. To increase competition, offer a prize or the opportunity to present work to senior managers and/or to be used by the organisation.

Whether it’s cleaning litter from a park, volunteering at a dogs home, working with children or even giving blood, charity work can be a very effective way for your team to work together and make a difference while doing it. Happy employees are effective employees.

From sailing to rock climbing, chess tournaments to retro gaming, and cooking classes wine tasting, getting together to learn a new skill and have fun is one of the best ways to encourage team bonding and the breaking down of barriers.

Brightstone have decades of combined experience in creating team building days for a range of organisations and individuals to help improve the performance of your teams. We work alongside you to create a program that will have a direct impact on your team, while being fun, challenging and inspirational at the same time.

Talk to Richard to find out more about how our team building events can help you.