How To Plan The Best Team Building Event
Team building events rely on strategies and timing to succeed. Learn how to plan the best team building event for your company today.Successful team building events are reliant upon various planning strategies. These strategies include developing valuable content for each event in addition to coordinating the most effective schedules. When are the best times to plan team building events? Believe it or not, the dates and times might make or break your event regardless of the quality of content you develop.
Professional companies are available to help you host your event(s). Both virtual and in-person events are possible, each including proven team-building exercises designed to make your event a popular success. Continue reading to learn valuable information about how to plan the best team building event for your company today.
What Is a Team Building Event?
Team building events are designed to convert individual employee aspirations and efforts into a coordinated group effort for the betterment of the entire company, including all employees. Events include group activities, learning moments/material and even travel. Effective team building develops new bonds between employees and bolsters existing ones. This is of course organically accomplishable during daily employee interactions and work activities as well. A team building event often removes the normal work environment from the equation, however, which helps foster more natural communication and interactions among employees.
Events might be as simple as familiarization meetings, during which employees are encouraged to get to know each other better. Events might also be held outdoors or out-of-town and include a wide variety of entertaining, educational and bond-creating activities. Combining viable activities and content with a perfectly-timed interesting event are the primary keys to success. Read ahead to learn how and why the timing of your team building events is vital to a positive outcome.
When Is the Right Time to Do Team Building Events?
“Timing is everything.” This phrase has been spoken repeatedly throughout history. While interesting quality content is essential for your team building event to be successful, the timing of the event has the potential to impact the outcome in significant ways as well. Two primary aspects of timing are relevant. The first aspect involves choosing the best literal dates and times for your events. The second aspect pertains to event frequency.
Frequency of Team Building Events
Work routines are important because they allow for consistency, accuracy, and increased productivity. At some point, however, routines might begin to feel mundane to some employees. Scheduling team building events multiple times a year breaks up their normal routine and offers something different to experience. Scheduling occasional surprise events also helps generate new enthusiasm among staff.
The perfect frequency of scheduled team building events varies per company. Balancing normal work routines with the proper number of events requires some research and perhaps even a little trial-and-error. Pay attention to employee responses and reactions to your events. Ask them their opinions so they know their thoughts and insight are important to you. Use this information to schedule events at a frequency best-suited to succeed.
Team Building Events - Choosing the Best Dates and Times
Schedule your events during normal work hours as much as possible to avoid infringing upon your employee’s free time outside work. Team building events requiring travel need to be planned far enough in advance to allow your employees to make appropriate arrangements without stress. Have you added a new member to your staff? An impromptu team-building event allows both the new employee and other employees already on staff to be introduced to each other in a casual setting.
Avoid scheduling your team building events during the busiest times of the year for your company. Employees working intently to accomplish deadlines and deliverables goals might not appreciate time taken away from their efforts. Wednesdays and Thursdays are excellent team building event days in general because they help break up the work week and normal routines. Finally, avoid scheduling your events on holidays - especially those geared toward family-based activities and travel.
Benefits of Team Building Events
Team building events benefit your employees and your company by developing enhanced bonds and improved communication techniques between members of your staff. This in turn improves morale, which leads to improved productivity and increased enthusiasm at work. Team building events also increase the confidence employees have in their abilities to accomplish their goals and work to and/or beyond capacity.
Team building encourages creativity as well, which helps your employees recognize their value. This creates an overall better working environment, which is proven to increase your company’s bottom line. Additional benefits provided by team building events include:
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Improved mental and physical health at work.
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Increased responsibilities of employees help staff invest in bottom-line outcomes for the company.
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Trust between co-workers is strengthened.
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Respect between employees is also developed and increased, which has a positive impact company-wide.
Types of Team Building Events and Activities
Team building events might be virtual or in-person depending on company needs. Activities included in your events will vary based on the type of event you schedule. Outdoor events might include picnics, zip-lining, or community action activities. Virtual events might include games, arts/crafts, and book club activities.
Team building activities might also include nuances of work-related education and learning materials. When incorporating these types of activities into your events, be certain to make them fun, entertaining, interesting, and different from normal work activities. This will increase your employee’s interest in the activities and help them better assimilate the information.
Please note: Asking your employee’s opinions about physical and/or outdoor event activities is important. Not all employees have the same physical capabilities and some might be uncomfortable in such scenarios. Plan alternate options for physical activities as applicable.
Team Building Event Hosting Companies
Numerous high-quality professional companies host team building events in 2022. These companies not only host your events but also help plan them, offering countless ideas for activities, locations, and themes. Prices range from approximately $3,000 through $18,000 for ten through one-hundred team members. A few of the best team building event hosting companies and locations in operation today include:
