What Is Team Building?
Team building is the process of creating a team that cohesively works together towards a common goal. The importance and main purpose of team building is to create a strong team through forming bonds and connections. Creating these bonds through team building is very beneficial to businesses and organizations. The benefits of an employee engagement program include increased communication, planning skills, employee motivation, and employee collaboration.
Fun activities that help people see each other in a different light allow them to connect in a different setting. People on your team are asked to think about the implications of these activities at their workplace and all of this is nothing but a well devised employee engagement strategy plan.
One of the most powerful reasons for team building is to get results. Through a series of planned, innovative employee engagement activities that are fun and motivational, teams build skills like communication, planning, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. These team building activity ideas help to facilitate long-term team building through fostering genuine connections, deeper discussions, and processing. Moreover, employee engagement increases employee commitment to the organization.
A close-knit team will ensure productivity and a good work environment. Here are 12 reasons to start engagement programs: motivate your team members and bring them closer together, even in the virtual workplace!
- Networking through employee engagement meetings, socializing, and getting to know each other better.
- Teamwork and boosting team performance.
- Competition and bragging rights.
- Celebration, team spirit, fun, and motivation.
- Collaboration and the fostering of innovation and creativity.
- Communication and working better together.
- Enhance company culture.
- Create something to look forward to.
- Show employees appreciation.
- Build bridges across departments.
- Unlock leadership potential.
- Improve employee engagement and morale.
Learn more about the 12 reasons to start planning team building activities at your company below.
The Top 12 Reasons For Team Building
1. Networking through employee engagement meetings, socializing, and getting to know each other better.
Socializing and making friends in the workplace is one of the best ways to increase productivity in the virtual, hybrid, or in-person workplace. Not only does it increase morale in the office: it will help your team adapt to a virtual work environment more efficiently, solving issues that come up with the “new normal.” Holding a team building activity can be short and sweet, or it can be a more complex event that everyone has more time to plan for! Either way, The Board Game Co. has all the resources you’ll need to make it fun.
2. Teamwork and boosting team performance.
Team building activities also work to improve workplace projects that involve teamwork because it helps the teams understand each other better. After completing team building activities together, employees better understand each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This understanding helps them work even better together on future progress vital to a company.
When everyone is contributing their best, it sets the tone for a positive work culture. Each team is different, and every individual has something unique to contribute. Once you can identify and encourage everyone to reach their individual potential, your team will be able to reach its collective potential as well.
3. Competition and bragging rights.
Competition has been shown to increase productivity. By channeling that increased productivity into a fun, inclusive team building activity, teams can bond in a more effective way than by other methods.
4. Celebration, team spirit, fun, and motivation.
After any sports team wins a major championship, they celebrate and have fun, which motivates them to want to win even more. This extreme example shows that the celebration, cheering, and fun that comes with every The Board Game Co. can motivate employees to bring their job to the next level!
5. Collaboration and the fostering of innovation and creativity.
People tend to have a larger imagination when they are around people, they are comfortable with. Successful team building events not only bring people closer together, but they also contribute to a more successful and creative workplace. Everyday workplace collaboration is key to a successful business. For example, a coach always has assistants to help when needed.
6. Communication and working better together.
To no surprise, communication and working better together is the top reason why people choose team building. Everybody wants a friendly work environment, where people are comfortable and happy to talk to and work with anyone.
One of the best outcomes for team building is that the activities work to improve communication.
Many hold these activities with the specific goal of working on communication and trust. While this is a general goal for every office, you may find certain areas of communication that could be focused on.
7. Enhance company culture.
Company culture can be explained as the values, norms, goals, and attitudes that exist within your organization. Simply put, it defines the environment you work in and makes up the personality of the company. According to Indeed, job seekers highly value a company’s culture, and 46% of those who considered a job, but did not apply to it, said they ultimately chose not to because they didn’t feel it would be a good culture fit.
Regularly scheduled employee engagement programs can improve your company culture and provide a space to understand your employees’ wants and needs. Sometimes the culture of management doesn’t match up with that of the employees, so finding a middle ground is an important step in creating a more positive environment. Team building activities help to cut out workplace toxicity and get everyone on the same page while working together. The benefits will be sure to follow you back to the office.
8. Create something to look forward to.
Whether it is once a week or every few months, scheduling team building activities will give your employees something to look forward to other than those project deadlines. No one wants to look at their calendar to see what seems like a never-ending list of tasks. Have your employees get excited about non-work-related events during the workweek, not just on the weekend.
9. Show employees appreciation.
Along the same lines, employee engagement events let employees feel appreciated for their hard work. Many times, great work can accidentally be swept under the rug due to a sea of other things going on. Prioritizing these events shows employees you care about them and appreciate their efforts by rewarding them with a fun activity the team can enjoy together.
10. Build bridges across departments.
The connections between employees within one department aren’t the only ones that matter when it comes to building a stronger team. “Team” doesn’t have to be confined to the sales team or the marketing team. It is a unified collection of all the working teams that make up your organization. Ask yourself – how well do you know employees in departments other than your own? If the answer is not well or not at all, then team building will surely bring departments closer together to encourage cross-functional collaboration that will benefit your organization as a whole.
11. Unlock leadership potential.
In a more relaxed and creative environment, you may find employees have hidden skills that haven’t been discovered in the office. Leaders can arise in the simplest of activities and may surprise you. Regularly scheduled team building events can feed employees’ confidence in the workplace.
Consider creating a mentor program to help employees achieve their highest potential. After each team building event, reach out to team leaders and request nominations for these programs based on colleagues that have stood out during these experiences. The Board Game Co. has specially curated a program titled LEAD to bring the best out of the employees through a workshop that targets building trust in teams, resolving conflicts, change management, developing accountability and the importance of collaboration.
12. Improved employee engagement and morale.
Committing to regularly scheduled team building events can build comradery, make employees more excited to come to work, more enthusiastic about their work, and more comfortable approaching each other. It also may help employees to feel more encouraged to step away from their desks and have some fun, which in turn will help them return to their work feeling refreshed and re-energized.
5 Employee Engagement Ideas to Try in 2023
Employee engagement activities give employees something common to talk about other than work. They can break down communication barriers and help teams work more efficiently. Most importantly, employees can take the skills that they learn from these events and apply them to their everyday tasks, such as creativity, thinking strategically, adapting quickly, and working collaboratively with their peers.
VR AR Enabled Murder Mystery – The Mavericks
If you are on the look out to provide your employees with a program that indulges in Next Gen Tech, then our Murder Mystery, is your go to.
It gets participants to solve a murder using technology like VR and AR, which gives them a supremely immersive experience. The activity also highlights resolving conflicts within a team and the importance of mutual dependency.
The Ultimate Team Challenge
Inspired from the otherwise well known Escape Rooms, we bring to you a version of the same that can be done just around a table. The Ultimate Team challenge gets participants together to solve clues, decipher codes and puzzles in order to successfully accomplish the challenge in the least possible time.
Geo Hunt Olympics
If you are planning an offsite or just another fun Friday (Well for us, all days of the week are fun!), you must try our Geo Hunt Olympics. It gives participants the gush of performing challenging physical tasks and solving clues to find their way to the TOP of the podium!
The Force
Looking for a program that is larger than life? Look no more! With our concept, The Force, participants take up roles to save their city from crime and do so by getting on top of a humongous map! (We are talking 10×15 feet!) This is not your ordinary team building experience, but a complete out of the box, over the top, exhilarating team challenge that participants are in true awe of!
Gold Rush
Gold rush is a simulation in which participants are explorers and are on an adventure to explore an ancient temple to excavate the hidden treasures. However the ancient temple is said to hold a lot of hazards in the form of ghosts, dragons, falling rocks because of which no one has succeeded. In order to maximize the treasure teams will need to overcome these challenges. Individually it can quite daunting but the teams which collaborate will be able to not only overcome the hazards but will be able to maximize the gold out put. This realization is the crux of the game.
Testimonials all over The Board Game Co. website will attest to the importance of team building.
If there is anything additional that you need, or something very specific you are looking to achieve out of a program, DO NOT hesitate to reach out to us and allow us to help you create a memorable experience.