No matter the size of your staff, teamwork is vital to the success of your business. While there are many ways to go about incorporating teamwork in your day-to-day work environment, there’s nothing like a team-building event to give your business a boost. Here are 5 reasons a team building event will help you start the year the right way.
1. Better communication
Both inside and outside of your chosen team-building activity, your employees will be interacting with each other differently to how they interact in the office. These interactions affect how communications in the office go. Not only do you create memories to discuss and laugh about, but you also give your employees the opportunity to get to know each other as individuals outside the office environment.
2. Buy-in and a collaborative work environment
Working towards a common goal puts you on the same page as the people you are working with. By collaborating on something with low stakes, it makes working on higher-stakes tasks later much easier. It also creates an environment where you get a crash-course on each individual’s skills and talents. This means that in the future, it’s easier to know who to turn to for assistance on different tasks.
3. Building trust
Team building events create a safe space for your employees to learn to rely on each other. Getting to know each other on a more personal level will make it easier them to offer or reach out for assistance from their co-workers in the future. This in turn will make sure that any current gaps in workflow are more likely to be covered going forward.
4. Building leadership
Events where the team must work towards a common goal are great times to test out and identify leadership potential. If you have already identified someone with potential, putting them in charge of a team will give you a chance to see how they handle the role. Similarly, if you are not identifying any new leaders in the office environment, watching how your employees handle the team-building tasks will present many opportunities to identify leadership potential.
5. Boosting morale
Working on something fun and not work-related is great for the mental health of your employees. It shows that you are making an effort to create a welcoming work environment and this can lead to a boost in morale. Ensuring that your employees are given a break from the day-to-day in a way that makes them excited to be a part of your staff will help in creating a healthy workflow going forward. After all, a motivated team is a productive team.
Most importantly, make sure that this event is genuinely fun and something that your employees will enjoy. If it just feels like another work task, many of the benefits listed above will be lost. Surveys are an easy way to find out what kind of activities your staff enjoys (there’s no use planning a hike if only one or two people in your office enjoy the outdoors). And if you are still stuck for ideas, here are 10 great company outing tips to try from our friends at Jump Parks.
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