In most companies, when the boss says, “Let’s play some team building games!” employees start re-running episodes of The Office in their heads. Team building shouldn’t be boring!
Effective team building means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture, eventually boosting the bottom line. It can also be exciting and enjoyable if you do it with a little pizzazz. There are many different types of team-building activities: outdoor and indoor, competitive or collaborative.
At Springworks, we’ve earned our spot on Glassdoor as one of the best places to work and team building is a big part of that.
Here are The Top Benefits of Team Building Activities
- Lots of Fun!
- Build Trust
- Improve Mental Health
- Improve Physical Health
- Increase Confidence Level
- Encourage Creativity
- Improve Morale
- Increase Productivity
- Better Communication
- Humanize Workforce
- Positive Company Culture
- Connect Remote Teams
- Identify Leaders
- Uncover Hidden Talents
- Resolve Conflicts
Let’s take a look at these benefits of team building activities and games (in-detail) at the workplace:
Benefits of Team Building at Work
Lots of Fun!
Team building activities and games let the teams come together to have fun at work! Creating a fun environment between coworkers can help in so many ways- from reducing staff turnover and sick days to increasing productivity and, in turn, profits.
Let’s take a look at these scary stats:
- A recent survey found out that 23% of employees face burnout in the office
- 50% of employees have one foot out of the door
- 25% of employees leave their job in the first year
And if you can avoid these with simple fun activities at work, what’s the harm?
Happy employees = happy customers = better bottom line
Happy employees are the ones most likely to be innovative and effective. Much of that begins with making work an enjoyable place to be. We are not advocating that you should turn your office into a sports arena. We need to get the balance right and ensure that we build in some time for fun activities and games that do not distract from core business.
Build Trust
Team building activities can play a huge role in helping employees get to know each other better. They can learn from each other, accomplish a task faster without any hesitation and develop trust.
Teamwork requires a lot o/f trust, and team-building games build trust fast. No team member can win a team game alone, so your coworkers come to rely on teammates’ help and expertise. When employees can trust and count on each other, they operate with a sense of freedom, leading to better results.
A Harvard study found that employees performed better when working with a team they were familiar with than when working with a new one. This study teaches us that being familiar with and understanding how your teamwork improves your performance over time.
Improve Mental Health
41% of employees feel stressed, burned out, or depressed at work regularly. It’s more important than ever for us to focus on the mental well-being of our teams. With fun team-building games, give your teams a break, inject some fun and levity into their busy work.
Poor mental health has always been directly linked with reduced motivation and employee output. Companies worldwide have started to recognize the important role that mental health plays in employee wellbeing and company performance. Here are some steps you can take:
- Make mental health a priority in the workplace and take tangible actions to drive positive holistic well-being.
- Build an open and supportive workplace culture that addresses mental health problems while also helping preempt them.
- Create an ecosystem of employee wellness programs and try some fun games and activities.
Improve Physical Health
The Harvard Business Review found that employers who took care of employee health and wellness saw a nearly 6-to-1 ROI.
Many studies have shown that wellness programs and office activities can improve employees’ health behaviors and deliver positive results.
Giving your employees a day out of the office or conducting some fitness challenges where they aren’t sitting at a desk all day is a great way to promote physical health.
Businesses cannot function if their staff are missing days because they are physically unwell, and that is why promoting good physical health through team building is important.
Increase Confidence Level
Participating in team-building exercises in a comfortable, non-threatening situation will help develop confidence in yourself and your colleague’s abilities.
Team building activities break up the monotony of the work week by periodically inserting fun activities. Let them recharge so they can return to work refreshed and confident.
Encourage Creativity
Team building games can be an excellent chance for your employees to get creative. For example, you might ask your team to build a boat that floats successfully in the pond. To compete with others, employees bond together and think of creative ways to accomplish this task.
The values of this task echo beyond the challenge and encourage people to think of out-of-the-box solutions. The next time employees encounter a potential problem at the workplace, they will be encouraged to think creatively and find a solution. When employees get playful, they open up to creative and innovative ideas as well, which is good for the company.
Improve Morale
When employees participate in different team-building games, they feel a boost in their morale. This happens due to two reasons:
- They undertake something new which excites them and breaks the monotony..
- Your teams feel that you are caring for them as an organization.
Team challenges give employees a sense of solidarity and boost their self-efficacy. This sense of solidarity makes your team feel more invested in each other and their work. A boost in morale will lead to increased confidence in one’s efforts and other team members in the workplace.
Increase Productivity
Working your team non-stop leads to burn-out. As the World Health Organization (WHO) defines it, burnout is “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
Setting aside time for team building relieves stress and re-energizes your team, which increases productivity and motivation at work.
According to Gallup, feelings of employee isolation reduce productivity up to 21%. Team building aims to foster employee connectedness, which may help boost productivity.
When colleagues participate in fun games and activities, they can create bonds that enable them to work harmoniously in achieving the companies’ or organizations’ goals.
Youtube video link: https://youtu.be/yfdLoRIpio4
Better Communication
Remember that an organization’s success depends on the staff’s ability to put their minds together and give their best to solve a problem. Many team-building activities let employees practice communicating while also giving your group opportunities to socialize outside of work. Team building games often break the ice and help members open up to each other.
According to a study, socializing between team members improves communication patterns by more than 50%.
Not every employee communicates the same way, so teams need to practice to understand better what communication style works. When socializing with coworkers, you create shared references through your talks while learning the best ways to communicate with your colleagues.
These insights will help you the next time you need to convey information to this team member, even if that next time is during an important meeting.
Humanize Workforce
When working in a company, team members are not regularly in contact with all members of your organization, especially if the company is large-sized. Because of this, team-building activities present a rare opportunity for your team to get to know members from other departments.
Team building activities help us to see our colleagues and managers as human beings. We find out that our colleagues are parents, volunteers, or passionate hobbyists. Team building humanizes the workforce that deepens relationships, and fosters greater understanding between team members.
According to researchers at MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory,
“Conversations outside of formal meetings are the most important factor that contributes to team success.”
Positive Company Culture
Your company culture revolves around the energy in the office. Team building exercises and games are a great way for teams to have fun and interact with one another. These interactions translate to a positive work environment back in the office.
When the team gets back from a fun day of team bonding activities, you can feel the energy in the office, giving the company culture a spirited jolt at the same time. Picnics and off-sites events keep employees excited to come to work and work towards the same mission. It’s best if the team can have a reminder of the event, such as a t-shirt to wear on casual Fridays.
Sometimes team-building programs reinforce culture, and other times they may evolve a culture.
Connect Remote Teams
A study found that 20% of virtual teams find it challenging to collaborate with their colleagues.
Remote team building has the power to build stronger relationships, which will improve productivity, retention, engagement, and morale and shouldn’t be overlooked. Team building is a great excuse to pull team members together who may not always work closely during their day-to-day responsibilities.
If you have a number of employees split across multiple locations or a team of remote workers, taking the time to allow them to build their relationships within the team and outside of the project deliverables can have a huge impact on how well they work together going forward.
This also allows for team members who may be quite isolated to feel closer to the wider team and improve their connection to the business and their peers. Remote teams can surpass in-person teams if they receive enough support, communication, and virtual team bonding.
Identify Leaders
Remote team building games can help organizations identify potential leaders at the workplace. For example, in a task, employees can be blindfolded and follow instructions to walk across a path with hurdles. Potential leaders will often take control of the situation by guiding their teams through the task with effective voice cues.
Similarly, in other scenarios, they might be someone working with all the others to find the best possible answer to a problem. The idea is to find a person who works positively with the team and motivates others at the same time.
14. Uncover Hidden Talents
As humans, we make quick judgments about other people, making it hard to see an individual’s true potential. When we only see our colleagues in one way, for instance, by job title, we overlook other abilities.
You never know how some of your team members can be good at problem-solving until they are put in a place where they have to perform for a reward. For instance, perhaps Kat in accounting is a talented artist who can give some amazing ideas to the graphic designers during crunch-time.
Therefore, team-building games can be an excellent reason to unravel your employees’ true potential. This way, they can be utilized in the real-world scenario and help solve a workplace problem.
15. Resolve Conflicts
Conflicts are a part of the workplace, but you should minimize them at all costs. Team-building games and activities are a wonderful opportunity to hone conflict resolution skills.
For example, if you create a time-based challenge, members will have to interact and find a solution. This sends across a positive message and breaks the underlying tension that has been building up between people.
Some ways team building activities resolve conflict are by:
- Understanding each other’s point of view
- Learning how to communicate problems and issues with one another
- Getting to know each other on a more personal level
- Reducing the chances of future conflicts
FAQs
What are the benefits of team building?
In this article, you’ll find 15 benefits of team building.
Why are team building activities so important for an effective team?
Team building activities can be conducted daily with close to no costs. These can help in ultimately strengthening and building a more engaged team. Here are some benefits:
– It boosts morale
– Teams get to know each other better
– It improves the team’s critical thinking skills
– Increases team collaboration
– Fosters a feeling of safety
What are the best team building activities for work?
[In this guide, you’ll find 27 team building activities and games you can try in your office.]
Why should organizations do team building?
Organizations should do team building because it is an investment that keeps your team happy at work and increases employee retention. When you plan team building activities for your team, you let your team know that you value them as people and want to get to know them.
How Trivia Can Help You to Win Team Building Game
Trivia helps teams forge stronger connections by enabling people to conduct team-building activities and games and feel more productive. Trivia brings together teams to play real-time games right inside Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat.
Because of its seamless integration with these communication tools, employees can get started with quick breaks at any point of the day without any prior planning.
How Trivia Can Help You to Win Team Building Game
Trivia helps teams forge stronger connections by enabling people to conduct team-building activities and games and feel more productive. Trivia brings together teams to play real-time games right inside Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat.
Because of its seamless integration with these communication tools, employees can get started with quick breaks at any point of the day without any prior planning.
