How to Organize a Team Building Event Everyone Will Love
If your employees tend to roll their eyes and let out a sigh whenever you mention the phrase “Team building,” then chances are you’ve been doing it wrong. Team building activities are supposed to promote teamwork, healthy competition, and a culture of collaboration within your organization. Therefore, if you are met with sheer reluctance instead of enthusiasm, then you’ve been getting the whole team building concept wrong. Here are a few tips to help you plan a team-building event everyone will be excited about next time.
- Create a Planning Team
Team building events are supposed to include activities everyone enjoys. Even though it will be impossible to make everyone happy, you should strive to create an event that at least a majority of your staff will be excited and happy about.
The key to achieving this is by getting them involved. In that light, create a team to help you organize the event. If your business has multiple departments, ensure you have at least two staff members represent their department. This way, everyone will feel involved, and their interests well represented.
- Start Planning Early
The key to getting any event right is planning it early. Once you know who is on the planning team, start right away. This way, you can have enough time to put together a list of team building activities as suggested by those on the team. Also, you will get enough time to have the rest of your staff go through the suggested activity list and review what they have to say so you can come up with the final list of activities that will take place on the D-day.
To achieve all this comfortably, team building experts recommend you start the planning process at least four to six weeks before the event if you have less than 100 employees. But if you have more, then you need at least four months.
- Have Clear Goals
Even though team building events are supposed to be fun, they are also supposed to help you achieve a particular goal. For instance, if you’ve noticed that most of your employees or those under you lack cohesion, then the purpose of the event should be to promote more interaction and team working skills. Escape room Houston is a perfect choice for this kind of activity, because it helps stimulate teamwork on a very high level. The event could also be geared towards fostering problem-solving skills or healthy competition at the workplace. Having clear goals from the word go ensures that every activity suggested by the planning team helps them achieve it.
- Ensure the Planning Takes Place During Work-Hours
To employees, something as short as a tea break is highly appreciated. The last thing you want is your employees to resent you and loathe all future team building events because the planning meetings are taking place during their free time.
Therefore, ensure that all the planning takes place during work hours. After all, this is a work activity. But again, it should not overshadow everything. So, the meetings should be short and take place during the less busy hours of the day, such as an hour before you close.
- Ask for Feedback
After the activities, ask for feedback. Ask your planning team to see what the rest had to say about the event. The feedback you get will offer you valuable information that you can use to ensure the next team building event is even more fruitful.
If well-organized, team building events can prove to be incredibly beneficial to your business. That is why you should strive to get everyone involved. However, team building activities should not be a once in a month or every three months thing — it should be a workplace culture that you can create using project management software.
