Building a business isn’t just about finding great employees and giving them the right responsibilities. It’s the job of the entrepreneur (or the HR manager, sometimes) to make sure that employees manage to work well together too. Team dynamics can make or break a company.
Successful teams aren’t just about good intentions. People often have a genuinely hard time pulling together, being a team and establishing working relationships. While a number of management techniques do offer businesses important ways of helping employees pull together as teams, one particularly important method is often neglected — team-building activities. To many companies, activities seem too touchy-feely to be much use, but to businesses that do try team-building activities, the results are usually a pleasant surprise. They see smoother work relationships and workdays that come with less friction.
Every company prefers different approaches to helping employees come together as a team. Many ideas work well universally, though.
A Fun Trip for the Team to Help Break the Ice
Organizational bonding trips to fun destinations work well in many situations, including ones that involve helping new employees get acquainted. Taking the team to Las Vegas or to a day full of must-see attractions in NY never fails to pump everyone up and to help establish closer relationships.
Volunteering Activities
In addition to bringing everyone together to help out for an important cause, volunteering can help businesses give back to society. It’s activity that can be especially helpful as a way to help fill employees with team spirit. In many cases, throwing employees together in an alternative activity can help bring out the leadership qualities in workers who do especially well in those situations. It can be good for their morale to help employees demonstrate how capable they are of doing well in different situations.
Organizing a Day of Sporting or Fitness Activities
From bowling to charity walks, softball, cross-country skiing, yoga or volleyball, a day of sporting or fitness activities can help employees bond. As with volunteering activities, sporting action can help push some team members ahead, offering them an excellent opportunity to demonstrate ability.
Classes for Professional Development
Placing employees together in a learning situation where they all start off on the same footing can be an excellent way to get everyone to see themselves as equals. Such a situation could allow team members to help one another out and connect in important ways.
Finding Fun Team-Building Games for Everyone
Management magazines recommend that businesses try team-building games and activities to help members come together to solve problems. A vast number of possibilities exist from games like Egg Drop, where teams are tasked with creating packaging out of basic materials to make sure that an egg placed in it survives a two-story drop, to Legoman, where the team comes together to build a Lego sculpture. Other activities include Pictionary and the creation of an office mural.
Depending on the kind of preferences the employees of the company have, anyone of these activities work out very well.