Corporate team building events can have a hugely positive impact on your team and their ability to work better together as a team, as well as a great tool to motivate your employees. There is a huge range of team building activities which are popular amongst companies with many taking their employees out for the day to undertake tasks which will see them working with one another. If this is something that you are interested in you could use activities such as paint balling or raft building, you could even try axe throwing with your coworkers, any event that will have them working in unison where the idea of team is everything. The big question that many face however, is whether team building should be fun or purely focussed on improving their team abilities, let’s take a look.
The Case For Yes
The large majority of managers who do take their team on these days out which aim to bring the team closer together will say that it should certainly be a fun day out, and not too heavy on discipline. The reason behind this is that without adding some fun into the mix, the employees will see this as just another day at work, and are less likely to actually take anything away from the overall experience. The idea of a team building day is to put people together who perhaps usually wouldn’t be together in the workplace, with the idea of instilling team values into them. With this in mind, the injection of fun into proceedings can help to break down barriers and in turn help to build character and relationships.
The Case For No
Those who suggest that a day such as a team building exercise should not be fun do have a compelling case and it is understandable why they think in this way. Whilst some workers may get great value from a day such as this far too many will simply look at it as a day away from the workplace, where they don’t necessarily have to provide very much. In this case it makes sense to create a serious environment and treat the day for what it is, a day where you need to stay focussed and learn.
Conclusion
The most logical conclusion to draw here is that a team building day should offer something in-between fun and focus in order to get the best from the employees. If there is too much fun being had it is likely that there isn’t a lot of learning going on, conversely if the day out is too heavily focussed on building and improving, those in attendance can easily become distracted or lose focus on what they are supposed to be doing. The activity should be fun but there should also be a lot of time dedicated to dissecting each activity, and reviewing the team aspects of it which both worked and failed.
When done right a team building day can make a visible difference to the output and performance of your team.