Does Team-Building Really Work? Here Are 4 Ways to Know

When it comes to your workforce, productivity, engagement and morale go hand in hand. How do you motivate your team to perform to the best of their abilities? What makes a high performing team? How do you instill a culture of team delivery?

Interestingly, one way to tackle low productivity issues may be to have a staff day out, taking your workforce away from the workplace for an opportunity to re-establish their common bond and their engagement with the company. While team building events are usually considered to be no more than a way for your staff to have fun day out away from the workplace, often as a ‘thank you’ for good performance, not recognizing the wider benefits could be a big mistake.

Here are 4 key benefits to be derived from a successful team building session/day in terms of boosting personal relationships and levels of engagement among your workforce, which will translate into productivity improvements when everyone is back in the office.

A big boost for office morale

When everyone is feeling overworked, understaffed, bogged down and stretched to the limit with no end in sight, a day out may be just what’s needed to raise morale among the troops. The prospect of getting out and doing something completely different from the usual daily schedule is enough to have a destressing effect!

Whether you’re planning a corporate spa day or a sports-based activity day, it’s a welcome opportunity for your employees to relax and get away from the office. Giving your workers the chance to get to know each other better without the pressures of work will deepen the bond between them. The morale boost delivered by a ‘corporate jolly’ should not be underestimated—it can do wonders for productivity levels

Strengthening the bond within the team

Teamworking is key in any business, and whatever you can do to strengthen and develop positive relationships between your employees, the more your company will benefit in the longer term. It’s all about a sense of shared purpose and common goals—one for all and all for one—and of building a sense of togetherness and trust that you can take back into the office. Team cohesion means that people will support each other and go the extra mile.

Team building activities such as outward bound courses or survival skill training are invaluable for pulling the team together. Of course, the more people get along, the smoother every interaction will be. Looked at from the opposite end, if people who work for you don’t get along, why would anyone bother to make the effort to do a good job?

Developing creative thinking

Stimulate your team’s creative juices while having a good time is a win-win scenario for all concerned. From a business perspective, you need creative thinking to be maintained at the individual, team and corporate level within the organisation. Whether you’re looking for innovative ideas to define and design a new corporate identity or looking for out-of-the-box solutions to intractable business problems, creativity is a hugely important attribute among staff members—particularly with the millennial generation.

“The work place is about to change its demographic in a bigger way than we’ve seen before. Over the next 3 years we will begin to see the exodus of the baby boomers and by 2020 a massive 50% of the workforce will be made up of the millennial generations X & Y. Organisations are about to lose billions of hours of experience, wisdom and know how, to replace it with new ideas, new working habits and mountains of energy.” iManage Performance

From improv workshops to cooking lessons, from perfume making to geocaching, there’s a wealth of fun corporate teambuilding activities and outings that your employees will love to be part of, without necessarily being aware of your hidden agenda. No need to tell them and spoil the fun—just sit back and reap the benefits.

Better staff communication

Last but by no means least, a teambuilding day is the perfect opportunity to break down any barriers to communication and improve interactions within the team. Workplace relationships tend to revolve around departments or other functional groups, while unfamiliarity with other colleagues may have no reason to change.

This is where team building activities can be hugely helpful. From simple but fun teambuilding games to elaborate, professionally led activity days, they promote new ways of communicating and encourage more positive interactions and relationships. When communication is easy between team members as well as between the team and its manager, everyone understands what needs to be done and productivity sharply increases.