To some employers, team-building activities and challenges can seem like an unnecessary expense, distracting employees and taking them away from doing their jobs. So, why do team-building exercises work? In reality, team-building events can strengthen employee relationships, increase productivity, and provide several other surprising benefits for employers and employees. While you might be dubious about the value of organizing such activities, there’s every reason to believe you can change your mind after learning about the following advantages.
Improved Communication
Many team-building activities, such as the Great Gotham Challenge, require exceptional communication. Without it, employees can’t work together to solve puzzles in a fight against the clock.
If your business has long-struggled with adequate communication, a team-building exercise can be an ideal way for your employees to develop relationships and improve their communication skills. When they are required to communicate outside their working environment, they can get to know their peers and open those communication channels with less discomfort in the workplace upon their return.
Better Productivity Levels
Poor productivity levels can have devastating consequences for a business. Low productivity equals low output, which often results in higher costs and less profit. While you might not immediately notice an increase in productivity after a team-building event, there’s potential for positive change when you prioritize teamwork.
In most team-building exercises, participants must work together to reach a common goal. When they achieve that goal by working together, they learn about the value of teamwork and communication, skills that are necessary for any successful workplace.
Leader Identification
Every business needs strong leaders who will guide their teams to success while balancing productivity, profitability, and staff happiness. Finding leaders already working within a company isn’t always easy, especially when you’re not intentionally looking for people with leadership qualities as they perform their regular assigned tasks.
However, team-building challenge courses can make these employees stand out from the crowd. They’re typically the ones who take the lead on an activity, give other participants jobs to do, and encourage full participation in a fun game or activity.
If you’ve been worrying about finding the next generation of managers to lead your business to success, there’s every reason to believe that organizing regular in-person and virtual team-building events can help you discover them. As a result, you might no longer need to recruit new leaders from outside your business.
Confidence Building
You might be confident in your team’s capability to perform their jobs to a high standard, but that doesn’t mean they hold themselves in the same high regard. Some people struggle with their self-esteem and belief in their abilities, never thinking they’re doing their job well or as well as someone else.
Team-building activities allow employees to prove to themselves and those around them that they are more competent than they think. If they can find confidence in a new activity like interactive puzzles and have their team cheering them on every step of the way, they can surely find confidence upon returning to their workplace.
Improving Workplace Relationships
It’s not uncommon for the average company with several departments to function like multiple individual businesses in one. Each department can have its own small team, and they rarely stray from them to communicate with other departments unless necessary.
As a result, many large businesses can end up with employees sharing the same space but being complete strangers to each other. Workplace team-building challenges can change that dynamic. When you invite employees to spend time with each other out of the workplace environment, they can interact with other workers they’ve never spent time with before and build relationships outside their own departments.
Make Remote Workers Feel Welcome
Remote work might not be popular in all countries, but it’s still popular in many. Many people love the freedom and flexibility of being able to work from anywhere in the world, while employers love not having the same commitments and obligations that would be expected of them with full-time employees.
However, disconnection is a common problem for both parties. Employees can feel disconnected from their colleagues, whether they work in the same town from home or in another country. They aren’t able to enjoy the same in-work relationships or water cooler chitchat. Employers can also struggle with the disconnect, being unsure about the workload their remote workers have and whether they’re giving them too much work or not enough. They might even be unaware of their strengths and weaknesses.
Team-building exercises give employees a chance to correct this problem. They can tune in for virtual team-building activities or be given the opportunity to attend in-person ones if they live close by. Whether online or in-person, team-building can be vital for building and maintaining strong relationships with all staff, whether they work in your building or from the comfort of their own homes.
It’s easy to assume that team-building exercises are nothing more than an unnecessary cost, but that can be far from the truth. Set up regular team-building exercises with your employees, and you might enjoy better workplace communication, higher productivity levels, improved relationships, and many other surprising benefits.
