Team Building Benefits and Trends

Surprising Team Building Benefits for Your Team

Most organisations choose team building to encourage collaboration and teamwork through engaging, fun and motivational activities. Teams build vital skills like communication, planning, problem-solving, and conflict resolution through a series of planned events that drive results.

However, in this post, we look at the unsung heroes of the team building benefits, which have a positive impact on your team development. Can you guess some of these?

Networking

Socialisations and networking skills in the workplace are important. Internal working relationships are as important as the external connections the team develops with its clients, partners, and customers.

Not only does networking increase morale in the office, but it also allows for the office to work better and become more productive in solving everyday workplace issues. Put simply, it is a vital skill to have among employees.

Celebration

Sometimes teams overlook the importance of celebrating successes – and even those failures that lead to better things. When sports teams win major championships, celebration is part of the deal. Why wouldn’t team building offer this prospect?

Encourage celebration, fun and cheering attitudes through team building. Celebration brings positivity and motivation for employees to up their game both in a personal and business context.

Competition

Aside from cooperation and teamwork, team building activities can enhance competition through developing competitive behaviours that stand well in the place of business and have been shown to increase production.

Channel the competitive spirit of your team with engaging and inclusive team building activities where individual employees or teams are free to compete against each other and derive benefits from doing so in a structured manner.

A well-facilitated and engaging team building event will add great value and return on investment (ROI).

The team building experience, formal or informal, is not recreational and includes process facilitation, debriefing, and reflective questioning.

Successful teams do what other teams are not prepared to do!

• Trends of Team Building

Trend #1 : Integration of Corporate Messaging

Throughout 2019, we’ve seen an increase in vigilance among organizations when it comes to their budgets. Companies have been increasingly focused on team building initiatives that are tangibly tied to business benefits. As a result, there has been a significant uptick in the number of custom team building activities that have been hosted for customers in order to tie in and reinforce corporate messaging. This has included things like:

• Product expansions and launches
• Sessions centered around company core values
• Integration of organizations’ vivid visions for the future

In 2020, we expect to see this team building trend continue, driving a spike in bespoke and customized activities incorporated into things like company off-sites and leadership meetings.

Trend #2: Team Building Focused on Business Simulations

In the past few years, we’ve seen teams, departments, and organizations putting a heavy emphasis on fun-based team building activities. But recently, we’ve also seen a wave of organizations joining the trend of hyper-focusing team building on analytics. This has been done as a way to gauge the effectiveness of the initiatives they pay for. Companies want to be able to assign results to the activities they spend money on.

As a result, in combination with the increased scrutiny being placed on budgets, we expect to see a shift away from purely fun team building activities towards those that have quantifiable business outcomes. For instance, we’ve noted a rise in team building activities that include business simulations – such as Charity Bike Buildathon– to help employees think outside of silos.

One thing for organizations to be mindful of is ensuring the pendulum doesn’t swing too far towards all business and no fun in team building. Historically, when we’ve seen team building trending towards being entirely metrics-based, we’ve seen a corresponding decrease in employee morale and engagement. This, in turn, hinders the development of bonds between team members. When this happens, the pendulum inevitably swings back towards incorporating more fun into team building activities.

Looking towards 2020, we would advise organizations to avoid going too far in either direction. Instead, focus on maintaining a good balance. To do this, organizations can:

• Seek Employee Input – Speak with your team to get open and honest insights into past team building investments that have been both effective as well as truly cherished by people. Ask about activities they have enjoyed, but also those that they felt they have learned from. This is a great way to find the balance between results-driven and enjoyable.
• Find a Happy Medium– It is wise to ensure you are not modifying team building activities so heavily that they feel less like a perk and more like a mandatory chore. For instance, reduce the number of free drinks offered at company parties but avoid going as far as making them into a potluck.
• Prioritize Quality – Use the feedback that you gather from your team to ensure you focus on what people have liked and maintain a high level of quality for team building activities, even if it means reducing volume and frequency.

We know how important it is to incorporate business learnings into team building, and we offer several programs that support this goal. But it is also important to ensure your team remains excited about team building activities so that it’s a positive and beneficial experience.

Trend #3: Increased Focus on Accommodating Remote Employees

Remote employment has taken off in recent years, offering big cost and culture benefits for businesses. In fact, more than two-thirds of employees globally work remotely on a weekly basis – and for good reason. Property costs in metropolitan areas have soared, causing office space to become less affordable, and sophisticated technology has become increasingly accessible.

And with a growing number of remote employees in the workforce, we expect to continue seeing team building trend towards accommodating them.

However, off-site employment creates new and modern challenges for teams and organizations. It makes it more difficult to develop individual relationships when colleagues do not see each other in person at work every day. But it is also more important now than ever.

That is why team building will be especially critical going forward – in 2020 and beyond. This does not mean simply having remote employees on a TV screen during meetings or company activities. Rather, it means finding ways to integrate them directly into team building activities rather than just peripherally.

To do this, you can:

• Use Technology to Your Advantage – This can include tools like Zoom and Slack for communication, and SharePoint for collaboration, but can also extend to team building activities.
• Plan Activities to Include Remote Employees – There is nothing quite like having remote employees in the room, even if it is only on an annual basis. It is important that these people feel like they are part of the team. Setting aside budget to fly them in when possible is a great way to do so.

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Contact Solutions Group Events for your next team building experience for your employees, after all teamwork makes the dream work.

+27 (11) 706 3242

stephanie@dev7.sd-dev.co.za