If you run a business, ensuring that your employees have a positive work environment is essential for sales and productivity. Additionally, it is helpful if your employees get along and work well together. Read further to learn more about why team building is important for your organization, and learn about a few team building practices that can help improve your team’s cohesiveness.
The Benefits Of Team Building
Not only can team building help your employees build essential communications skills, plan well together, and boost problem-solving and conflict resolution, it can help them be more productive and effective. Moreover, while that may seem a bit harsh, the fact remains that if your employees are not able to work together, your business loses money. Providing them activities that facilitate team building will help them perform their jobs better and work together in ways that save your business time and effort.
With that in mind, consider a few activities you can try to help boost team building in your organization, below:
Top Team Building Activities
- Solving Mysteries
Mystery kits are a great way to get your team to work together in order to solve complex problems. This can not only be creative and fun for participants but can help your employees learn how to work together. If you want to get out of the office, consider an escape room to send your employees to. Unlike mystery kits, escape rooms can get your whole team solving a complex puzzle together in an interactive 3D environment.
- Playing Board Games
For decades, board games have helped families and friends bond, which is why most families will have a “family game night” consisting of only board games or card games. They can be equally as effective to help your employees bond and learn how to work together.
Strategy games, can be especially effective at getting your team to use their brains, which can help improve their team problem-solving skills. Or go old school and break out the Monopoly board. Or try strategy board games like Settlers of Catan. - Team Sports
Consider building a sports team with your employees and competing with teams from other businesses. Kickball, softball, bowling, or golf are some of the common choices. Find out if there are any business leagues in your area and go from there.
Participating on a sports team can help your employees bond and have fun outside of work, while allowing them to make new connections along the way. Keeping them active and healthy will help them perform better, and the cooperation skills they will learn will carry over into the office.
- Celebrate Diversity
Do your employees represent various nationalities and cultures? You might want to try cultural appreciation exercises. Once a month, perhaps, choose a week where you and your employees partake in some aspect of another employee’s culture. Make an authentic meal from their culture or home country, or watch a movie native to their homeland. This can help your employees learn how to appreciate each other and understand where each person comes from.
- Q & A Sessions
Establish a time for a Q&A between your employees. This can take many forms. One idea is to have each employee ask another an open-ended question and continue through the group until everyone has asked someone a question (and gotten a response). Or you can designate someone to ask one thought-provoking question that everyone then discusses as a group. These types of exercises can help employees learn about one another in various ways, while helping encourage creative thinking throughout the organization. - Work-related Teamwork Competitions
If you can not get your employees out of the office (for whatever reason), you can try work-related competitions. Competitions based on the amount of sales, acquisitions or emails processed by each employee are a great way to encourage a little friendly competition and help with team building. Moreover, because employees have to get better at their jobs to participate, sales and production levels will improve, and as competition heats up, employees will often work harder to win.
Conclusion
Just doing work day in and day out can get monotonous and uninspiring for many people, even business owners. Activities that will help you and your employees learn how to work together and get along can be both fun and help increase productivity. Any activity that encourages employees to work together and learn about each other can be employed as team building practices.
For more information about team building activities, speak to someone at Room Escape Fairfax.