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.
Let’s take a look at some benefits of team building activities and games at the workplace:
1. 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.
2. Builds 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 of 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.
3. Improves 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.
4. Improves 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.
5. Increases 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 workweek by periodically inserting fun activities. Let them recharge so they can return to work refreshed and confident.
6. Encourages 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.
7. Improves 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.
8. Increases Productivity
Working your team members non-stop leads to burnout. 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 reduces 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.
9. 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.
10. Humanizes 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.”
Team building activities can be conducted daily with close to no costs. These can help in ultimately strengthening and building a more engaged team.
Previously published at https://www.springworks.in/blog/benefits-of-team-building-activities/