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Taking your team away for team building - does it work?

Ask some people to comment about their off-site corporate team-building experiences and you will get wildly different responses. These might include: “Complete waste of time”, “It brought us together”, “We got really creative and worked out some great solutions for our business” , and “I fell off the flying fox and into the dam”.

Hundreds of businesses in Australia offer teambuilding days, weeks, weekends, workshops and activities. Included in these are cooking classes, abseiling, fishing, camping, hiking, Japanese kendo fencing, movie making and mountain bike riding. It seems companies are spoilt for choice when it comes to options for off-site teambuilding.

 Team building trips can be very beneficial

 

Most organisations find that team-building trips can be an excellent way to address a whole range of business issues. They can breathe fresh air into your organisation, and can help people to open up to each other and build better working relationships.

Team building trips can:

  • Challenge your staff - intellectually, emotionally and occasionally physically;
  • Help focus on solving specific problems facing your business;
  • Create an environment in which everyone can contribute;
  • Break down barriers and improve camaraderie;
  • Help develop new approaches to problem solving;
  • Create a forum for effective communication and understanding; and
  • Boost morale.

In most cases, some planning and forethought will make your trip a roaring success. Here are a few things to consider:

Make sure your objectives are clear.
‘Team-building’ should not be an end in itself. If you make it the goal, your team may view the trip with cynicism. Instead, announce the purpose of the trip. Perhaps it could be to develop a strategy for the next financial year, or to have a think tank about fixing a specific business problem.

Time it right.
Don’t go in extremely busy times, during restructuring or after a redundancy announcement. An off-site trip in times like these can do more harm than good and could ultimately damage morale.

Mix it up.
Maintain the balance between real work and fun activities. All work and you may as well have stayed at the office. All play or team-building activities and you run the risk of being seen as a time waster. Ask your team what activities they would like to do, and be sure everyone can join in. Don’t force people to abseil cliffs if they don’t want to. Also, most people are tired of the trust game where you let the blindfolded person fall into your arms.

Provide plenty of down time.
This is important for networking and allows your team to casually chat and build relationships.

Relax deadlines to let the team focus.
You don’t want everyone constantly checking their emails, or having their minds elsewhere. If all goes well the team will come back much more productive and soon catch up.

Follow-up!
If you don’t, the exercise will be seen as a waste of time. This can build resentment- especially if deadlines were missed because of the trip. Ask your team for feedback, and be sure to implement the positive changes that you agree upon.

 

 

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