Team building
Could the staff in your workplace do with a boost in morale? Are the employee turnover rates high and productivity levels low too? Corporate team-building activities could make for the perfect solution to turning these issues around.
Exercises designed at getting people working as a team are great and easy for building an effective company culture.
Bear in mind that company culture involves the environment, values and goals of a business and its staff. If your company was a human, it’d be its personality.
Businesses like Google and Twitter lead the way in building happy, positive company cultures that attract and retain a high-performing workforce — but how do you use corporate team-building activities to engender a successful company culture that will benefit staff and profits?
When you consider that there are on average 1,900 monthly searches across the UK for the search term ‘team-building exercises’, it’s quite a shock to hear that so many employers have yet to place regular corporate days out into their firm’s social calendars.
Chill Factore, a provider of fun things to do in Manchester for adults, lists below the benefits of team-building exercises on company culture and how encouraging corporate excursions for your staff can help take your business to the next level.
They offer the opportunity to bond
Usually, workplaces will be filled with people who would not choose to socialise if they were to meet in other situations — possibly due to differing interests or personalities. Therefore, it’s critical that you find a way to bring your staff together — and holding a regular corporate day out could be the simplest plan.
Your workforce will be more social when undertaking team-building exercises together though, not to mention the activities working to build trust among staff. This will all likely to work to improve your company’s overall performance. Senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, Jim Dougherty, claims that: “Managers will never learn the truth about their company unless they have their employees’ trust.”
Work on improving the trust levels among staff — as well as how much people trust you — by opting for team-building exercises which focus on communication, teamwork and group planning. This increased sense of familiarity builds a greater personal connection, which means your staff will feel more comfortable discussing problems — and potential solutions. This will allow for more efficient problem-mapping processes to overcome issues that could be holding your company back without your knowledge.
They improve communication skills
The efficiency of your company could be suffering because your members of staff aren’t discussing ideas together, going over processes or generally just failing to communicate with one another about day-to-day tasks. Not to mention create an inhibited company culture with disconnected employees. Solving issues that affect your business can only be achieved with clear, concise and confident discussions between members of staff — which is where team-building exercises come in.
Look out for corporate days that are all about interactivity — ones which involve undertaking skiing lessons or being challenged to a treasure hunt, for instance. Choosing a team-building exercise that is fun, original and challenging will help your staff engage with the task at hand and you’ll have a greater chance of everyone pulling together to get the job done — a process that will then be adopted in the office.
Aim to take your staff members away from a workplace that they are familiar with and place them into a new situation where they are given a collective goal to work towards. This should naturally inspire communication, as everyone is suddenly on ‘neutral ground’ where office politics are redundant.
Help break down those barriers further by choosing an activity where teams must follow instructions and swap ideas to help bolster creative thinking in the workplace and help individuals learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Each member of staff will be different mind. Some find it easy to talk to others in a professional environment, while others don’t. Once those barriers of communication have been removed, your staff will feel more confident approaching each other for help and guidance on work-related matters, which will encourage a more open and fluid company culture.
They will boost morale throughout the office
The fact that corporate days out show to your staff that you care about their morale is one of the main benefits of checking out the activities. According to the Department of Economics and the University of Warwick, happy employees are up to 20% more productive than other workers. Since staff morale is intricately linked to happiness, you should implement initiatives, like team-building activities, companywide to ensure that your staff feel positive when they walk into work.
Corporate days out will be something that the majority of your staff will look forward to — it’s something different, after all — and also injects some fun into your business. Many expert psychologists have conducted experiments showing that anticipation is a key stage of cheerfulness.
According to Action for Happiness, an organisation that helps people take practical steps to create a happier society, feeling good about the future is important for our happiness and motivation. If you want to encourage your staff to be ambitious, perhaps it’s worth beginning by taking action and finding the time to book a fun, group activity that you think they’d enjoy.
They help improve productivity levels
Staff members will be encouraged to communicate and be engaged when getting involved in a team-building activity, which are both key elements to heightened productivity levels. The more engaged and productive your staff are, the more efficient your daily operations will be, which both have a positive effect on your profit margin.
Research-based consulting company Gallup claims that employees who are engaged become around 17% more productive. They also demonstrate a 41% reduction in absenteeism. What’s more, highly engaged companies are reported by Gallup to be approximately 21% more profitable than those that aren’t.
You can also work to boost imagination and originality by looking into team-building activities which involve the creation of building of something. These skills can then be transformed by your employees into the workplace. Plus, working together outside of the office will help highlight personal strengths and weaknesses among staff, which will give management a greater idea of the type of training and development courses that could improve performance.
They will assist in ambitions to retain staff
Staff retention figures at your company can be enhanced through corporate days out as well. Assuming that the advantages stated above come to fruition, your workplace will be a more productive, happy, sociable, communicative, and trusting place to spend a weekday. This positive company culture should decrease the number of staff choosing to resign and keep talent within your company.
Columbia University carried out a study which found that a company culture which includes positive activities like team days out can function to bring down the number of people who leave a company. The research showed that the chance of job turnover at a business with a positive company culture is only 13.9%, while the likelihood of a high job turnover rate in places with poor company cultures is 48.4%.
Take note that a company’s credibility can be viewed in a negative light by prospective employees if the firm is producing a high employee turnover rate. It also means you must invest resources into frequently training new staff. Consequently, you lose experience, money, time, and the best chance of attracting a wide network of new, quality talent.
Sources:
http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/208487/right-culture-not-employee-happiness.aspx
https://tech.co/team-building-activities-productivity-2017-06
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-company-culture-2062000
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238640
https://www.gthankyou.com/blog/research-shows-happy-employees-are-more-productive-by-gthankyou
https://www.business2community.com/sales-management/boost-sales-team-morale-year-end-01973983
http://www.tgdaily.com/enterprise/9-benefits-of-team-building-activities-in-the-workplace
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218125204.htm
http://www.actionforhappiness.org/10-keys-to-happier-living/have-goals-to-look-forward-to
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238640
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