As business owners, it’s natural to want your employees to execute the best performances and expect them to be at the top of their productivity levels. After all, your employees are your greatest assets, so their outputs are the key to higher sales and more profits.
Yet sales and profits aside, looking out for your employees’ welfare is essential now and then. Otherwise, pressuring them to meet quotas and exceed key performance indicators without considering their needs or concerns can adversely affect their morale and productivity. One way to keep your employees on top of their game is by hosting team-building activities.
What Is Team Building?
Team building is the method of creating a solid team by forming connections and bonds between different members. The primary objective of team building is to help employees become a cohesive team that can work better together.
Although the intention and goal of team building are good, many companies are still skeptical about whether to invest time and budget for it. Aside from being a time-consuming activity, hosting such can be expensive, and not everyone may find them enjoyable.
Why Should You Hold Team-Building Activities?
Despite its reputation, hosting team-building activities should be one of your priorities when managing a company. This is because a team that knows how to work together in harmony can overcome any obstacle and achieve bigger things. If you’re still unsure, here are five reasons to hold team-building activities that may help you understand their essence:
1. Connects Remote Teams
Hosting team-building activities for businesses with a remote workforce can connect remote teams effectively. Because your employees work in their home offices, there’s less opportunity for them to engage with their coworkers, leading to feelings of isolation.
Through these team-building activities, you can encourage your employees to team up with other remote workers, develop connections, and build better relationships. All these will improve your workforce’s productivity, morale, and engagement.
So, if you haven’t done any team-building activity for your remote workforce, now’s the time to do it. You can try some fun virtual events for work that will promote employee engagement, such as:
- Virtual team dinner
- Online office games
- Weekly virtual trivia
- Storytelling workshops
- Virtual team-building bingo
These are only a few suggestions to help start your company’s team building. You can still find more virtual activities as you continuously plan for your company’s monthly or quarterly team-building program.
2. Helps Build Trust Among Employees
Trust plays a critical role in creating solid and effective teams. When team members don’t trust each other, they won’t be able to collaborate, listen to each other’s ideas, or arrive at an effective solution. If you aim to develop trust among your employees, hosting team-building activities may be your best shot.
Through these activities, they’ll teach themselves how to listen and build trust with other members, know each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and arrive at a consensus. Ultimately, the more your employees trust and listen to each other, the more you can expect your workforce to have more collaboration, better communication, and eventually, better output and performance for your business.
3. Fosters Learning And Creativity
Your employees must be innovative and creative to have a thriving business. Having employees with diverse perspectives and different creative processes can ‘cross-pollinate’ and provide your business with fresh ideas. In contrast, letting your employees work alone with no opportunity to work in groups can affect their creativity and hinder them from learning new ideas and perspectives from others.
Hence, if your employees are currently struggling with being creative, perhaps holding team-building activities may help. Some team-building tasks allow employees to use their imaginations or ideas to develop innovative solutions. Team building brings together different individual ideas and experiences, resulting in everyone contributing something new to the team and learning from each other.
4. Promotes Healthy Competition
It’s been said that when you turn a certain task or goal into a competition, employees tend to work more and achieve more. Hosting team-building exercises may be a fun and effective way to bring out the competitiveness in your team members and motivate them to show their best performances. Besides, you might be surprised to see your teams come together and work extensively when they know there’s an incentive to win.
They can also collaborate with the other workers and inculcate team spirit. Sooner or later, the healthy competition brought by team building can help your employees acquire new skills (e.g., problem-solving) and push them past their limits.
5. Improves Company Culture
Working together gives your employees a platform to know and understand their coworkers’ wants and needs, which will help resolve conflicts and misunderstandings, improving the company culture. Company culture is the goals, norms, or values in your organization that define your company’s personality.
Hosting team-building activities can help everyone understand the company better and get everyone to be on the same page and work together. Remember, better company culture results in better business performance.
Key Takeaway
Having a solid team of employees is crucial for the success of your business. Thus, aside from satisfying your customers and meeting their needs, ensure you look out for your employees’ growth and welfare. Holding team-building activities can help improve employee productivity and morale, promote communication, and boost your company’s profitability.
