Normally, this would be a good chance to promote the benefits of orienteering days, business-wide bake-offs, or hypothetical problem solving tasks.
The ones where (you and your team may have already dedicated significant time to navigating your way out of a fictional desert, using only a mirror, a can of petrol, and half a bar of chocolate).
But the real way to boost productivity, through team building, is not through the activity – it’s through the action.
Open up to one another
Poor communication in the workplace can be costly. When you’re deciding which team building activity you and your troops will undertake, opt for one that will get them talking about more than the activity itself. A study by Harvard Business Review found that employees spend almost 3 hours every week dealing with conflict in the workplace. Effective team building activities should be an opportunity to overcome internal squabbles by working together, while openly discussing why certain opinions and strategies aren’t, or won’t work.
Leverage leadership
While observing, guiding or taking part in these open-minded, open-ended communication activities, you’ll get a good idea of which employees desire more responsibility. And while this could obviously give you an idea of who may be in line for a raise, more importantly is being able to identify overly dominant personalities. These are the people who could be causing problems in the workplace – problems that aren’t helping with your productivity. Make a note of who are the people who want to collaborate, and those who demand leadership. There’s a big difference between the two.
Create a community
The end result of any team building activity should be all your employees working harmoniously for the foreseeable. But that’s unlikely to be the case. However, it will hopefully bring people closer together, and see your team communicating more efficiently than they did before. So build on it. An increasingly popular choice for progressive business owners is adopting business-wide well-being platforms, and encouraging employees to make the most of them.
Applications such as Lifeworks enable managers to oversee and improve the wellbeing of their staff, both in and out of the workplace. Building closely connected communities within your existing staff rota can boost productivity and make staff feel genuinely loved.
Inspire creativity
And this can be enhanced further by giving them the ultimate in employee empowerment. Allowing staff to be more creative, even just during team building activities, shows them that you value their ideas. The concept of creative freedom does not initially sound like it will bode well for productivity – but staff who feel they have the power to change their environment are more likely to dedicate themselves to doing so. Carry the motivation of the team building session into the rest of the working week by acknowledging the creative thinking that could benefit your business. It could be the exact spark of inspiration you’ve all been looking for.
