Team Building Benefits, Importance & Advantages – The time has come for organizations in every industry to recognize and take advantage of the benefits of team building. We live in a world where teams no longer need to be in the same room to succeed. Many teams around the world work together without seeing each other in person! This is largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced millions of workers to work remotely.
Although technology allows teams to work together from anywhere in the world, that doesn’t mean they’ll work well together. It is essential that team members feel more connected to each other than a WiFi signal. With the convenience of digital communication (chatbots, AI assistants, WhatsApp, Slack, social media apps, and so on), it can be too easy to let a natural, face-to-face connection slip through the cracks.
Team building exercises
One of the easiest ways to build and strengthen real connections within teams (in person) is through exercises and virtual team-building activities.
During team-building exercises, participants will work together toward a common goal through games and activities. Some examples of team-building exercises include escape rooms, team trivia, murder mystery games, and virtual cooking classes.
Benefits and advantages
One of the best benefits of team-building activities is that – if designed well – your team will start to get stronger without even realizing it. (They must be having so much fun with each other!)
The benefits of team building include improved problem-solving skills, innovation, job satisfaction, collaboration, and camaraderie. There are many other benefits of team building that we’ll cover later
The benefits of team-building exercises are not exclusive to remote or even professional teams. Many types of teams can take advantage of team building, including sports teams, music groups, families and friends.
This article will discuss why team building is essential, the benefits of team building, the specific benefits of team building exercises, and how you can implement team building activities in your organization.
Why Team Building is Important for Your Business
Provide employees with a different perspective on each other
Employees spend much time with each other but are often too busy working to interact regularly. A day out of the office allows employees to see each other differently and interact with employees they may not work with regularly. Regardless of the size of your business, every employer should consider incorporating such team-building activities.
Make employees feel valued
Employees love being a part of something more than just a job, something fun to look forward to every day instead of a boring, monotonous environment. Employees become more engaged when businesses encourage them to have fun. Many businesses include an employee page or add it to an about us section on their website, often creating things that give more detail about each employee.
Improves business relationships all around
Teams cannot function well when members are not there. Therefore, encouraging employees to value communication and teamwork helps improve work relationships and quality. Team building activities are designed to develop strong communication and collaboration, which helps teams become more effective and efficient.
What are the Advantages of Team Building?
Create friendships
When working in a company, team members are not in regular contact with all members of your organization, especially if the company is significant. Because of this challenge, team-building activities are an opportunity for your team to get to know members of other departments. Team building activities are also great for your employees to meet new colleagues.
Promote company culture
One of the major benefits of team building is that it can foster a company culture. When you dedicate resources to team bonding, you show what kind of company environment you want to create for your team. By doing fun activities together, you show your team that you value them and want to develop positive relationships within your workplace. Establishing a company culture that values these connections attracts excellent talent and increases employee retention.
Increase team collaboration
Best team-building practice requires employees to work together to accomplish a goal. While collaboration is essential for teams to work together, it may require some practice. Team building provides the perfect opportunity to practice collaboration and learn what workflow works best for your team, helping your employees become more efficient.
When team members don’t interact often, a lot of awkwardness stems from shared memories or not having talking points. Simple team-building activities like icebreaker questions help spot commonalities that participants can discuss the next time they meet. One obvious benefit of team-building exercises is helping employees create shared memories to be friends more easily.
Strengthen communication
Not everyone communicates in the same way, so teams need to practice. Since team-building exercises require coordination with colleagues, they naturally strengthen communication. Some studies suggest that this improvement is up to 50%. This is a huge advantage when it comes to working on projects together.
How to Plan the Perfect Team Building Exercise
The activity must be appropriately structured for participants to experience the benefits of team building. The best team-building exercise is planned with the following features:
1. Focus on Inclusivity
The activity should be easy for everyone to participate in so that no one feels excluded or excluded. This may mean that you have to stick to remote events that don’t require much physical activity or events within walking distance of your office (or at the office). Your team-building exercises should encourage everyone to participate – especially those who tend to be shy or soft-spoken.
2. Set Clear Expectations
Everyone needs to be clear about why you’re holding the event and how it will happen before it happens. It’s “Why are we doing this?” will terminate. Instead, everyone can get excited about the event and walk in with a clear understanding of what they will do.
3. Focus on Team Issues
You don’t have to make things uncomfortable by sending an email that says, “We are hosting a trust-building event because of X recent issue!” But the team-building activity you choose should be at least relevant to your team’s goals and focus on success in certain areas.
4. Have a Singular Goal
Everyone must work towards the same thing, even if it is divided into teams. A single target helps to create harmony between the group(s) and will allow you to compare/contrast results in the end.
5. Encourage Openness and Vulnerability
Encouraging openness and vulnerability generally leads to better understanding, deeper relationships, and increased trust among colleagues – three characteristics of a successful team!
6. Establish Ground Rules
How will the teams resolve disagreements? How long will the event last? Is there a dress code? Can family members join? Establishing ground rules will help the event run as smoothly as possible.
7. Foster Trust
Incorporating confidence-building into a team-building activity is not difficult, but it is necessary. When team members trust each other to perform well during low-stakes team-building activities that trust will translate into high-stakes work tasks.
8. Weak leader
If leaders aren’t ready to join in the fun, get silly, and be weak, why would another employee want to? Leaders have to be the example that everyone is excited to follow!
Final thoughts
Team building activities are a fun and simple way to build dynamic and effective teams that love their work and appreciate their coworkers. With all of the above benefits to team building (and many more!), it’s impossible to deny that your team needs a little team building, no matter how effective. Imagine how much more effective you can be after a few team-building exercises!
