8 tips for creating a more impactful teambuilding event
Teambuilding events are ideal for promoting strong bonds between your employees, improving morale, and even giving your team members new skills and abilities. But if you want to make the most of these events, you need to plan appropriately.
The Value of Teambuilding Events
Teambuilding events provide value in multiple ways, including:
- Employee stress relief and morale. For starters, teambuilding events are often fun and engaging activities that give your employees an opportunity to destress and feel better about their work environment. This, in turn, increases morale and decreases employee turnover.
- Bonding and collaboration. These events are also opportunities for employees to get to know each other better, supporting better bonds and better collaboration in the future. Your employees will be much more likely to work together efficiently and productively.
- Skill development and learning. Some types of teambuilding events provide the opportunity for individual employees to learn new skills and develop themselves as professionals. For example, they might learn advanced problem-solving skills.
How to Create a More Impactful Teambuilding Event
So what steps can you take to create a more impactful teambuilding event?
Obviously, some of your success depends on the activity you choose for your group. Your employees are going to get different benefits from different activities like snowboarding, solving a murder mystery, and going on a scavenger hunt. But because almost any teambuilding event will have something to offer, the most important thing is choosing an event that actually sounds appealing to your employees.
From there, these are the most important tips to follow:
1. Make it a day (or half day at least). It's hard to call it a teambuilding event if it only lasts for half an hour. If you're going to make the investment in a full, formal teambuilding event, it's important to make it a full day or half day at least. This way, your team members will have more time to get to know each other and truly extract value from the experience.
2. Use it as a break from work. Even if the event sounds fun, most employees don't want to spend a Saturday or Sunday on a mandatory work experience. Instead, use the team building event as a break from work if you can; give your employees the day off.
3. Charter a bus. A charter bus service can improve your teambuilding event in a few different ways. First, having access to transportation immediately broadens the number of events you can choose for teambuilding. Second, you'll make transportation much easier for your employees. And on top of that, riding on the bus together provides an opportunity for conversation and personal engagement.
4. Incentivize participation. Make employees feel like their participation is worth it. Incentivize employees to participate by offering gift cards, gift baskets, prizes, or other rewards; this can be even stronger motivation if the event is somewhat competitive and winners get better prizes than losers.
5. Make sure everyone feels comfortable and safe. Some companies have used “teambuilding events” as glorified hazing rituals, intentionally making employees go through difficult experiences for the sake of growth, but this is generally frowned upon. Instead, it's better to build an inclusive and accepting event where everyone feels comfortable and safe at all times.
6. Make sure everyone is engaged and involved. This is an event for the entire team, so make sure the entire team is involved. Some people may naturally participate more than others, introducing more ideas or dominating the conversation, so act as a mediator to make sure your quietest and least involved employees have a voice in the event.
7. Introduce competition (but make sure it stays friendly). Competition often makes a team building event even more fun and engaging, as long as that competition remains friendly. Pit two teams against each other or have everyone fend for themselves; as long as there's some kind of challenge in place, it should work in your favor.
8. Get employee feedback. Employee feedback is valuable for more than just teambuilding events, but it’s one of the best tools you have for better understanding the success of your event, better understanding your team, and accomplishing more the next time you’re all working together. What did employees love about this event? Is there anything they hated about it? What kind of events would they like to see in the future? Do they have requests for how the event should be staged or offered?
Hosting the perfect teambuilding event doesn’t have to be a massive challenge, nor does it have to be a chore. If you follow these strategies and think carefully about what would benefit your employees the most, you'll end up with an event that everyone can enjoy and benefit from.