How to Organise Successful Corporate Team Building Events
Corporate team building events are on the rise – more and more companies are realising that you can’t just put random people in the same office and expect them to mesh on their own.
What’s more, developing people-skills that go beyond the duty of each employee is essential as well – without communication and collaboration, even the most talented group of workers can fail to achieve their goals.
But why are corporate team-building events so effective? According to Angelee Rathor, Director of Seven Events, a London-based event company specialising in bespoke corporate event planning, there are a number of benefits that team building activities can offer:
- They can help your employees learn to work with each other in different situations;
- Encourage them to be creative and showcase their unique problem-solving skills;
- Help to improve productivity by helping the team mesh together and find better ways to communicate.
One thing’s for sure – if executed properly, team building events can not only be very beneficial but can also be incredibly fun for everyone involved.
Read: 10 Creative Ideas to Promote Your Corporate Events
10 Tips to Organising Winning Team Building Events
So how do you create a plan for an event that brings the best results?
Well, it can be a complicated process, and sometimes it’s best to hire a professional event management agency to help you, but here are ten tips to get you started with your corporate team building activities:
1. Set Clear Goals
Even though an event can be fun for everyone involved, it’s important to remember that in the end, it has to accomplish its goals to be worth the investment.
That’s why it’s important to establish clear areas of focus that you want your employees to work on during the events.
Only after you set some basic guidelines of what you want to achieve can you start thinking of planning activities and challenges that best fit your focus.
2. Establish a Budget
Once you know what your priorities are for the team event activities, it’s time to determine a budget is for making it all happen.
It’s important to think about the budget before moving on with the organisational details because it will serve as a guide for what you can afford and how extensive can your team event be.
There are many ways to achieve the goals of your event – some of them can be almost free, and others can cost thousands. With a budget, you can be certain that the price of the event will not skyrocket.
3. Involve the Right People
Coporate team building activities can be very beneficial for all employees, but as is the case in most companies, some employees need more help than others.
Whether it’s poor people’s skills, isolation, or even a tendency for conflict, making sure that people who need to improve are actively engaged is essential.
After all, it wouldn’t be of much use if only the social people participated while those that are more closed-off would remain lurking in the background.
4. Find a Proper Time
You can’t expect your employees to fully engage with your event if you do not plan it to fit their schedules and personal lives.
Some people will have an issue with doing teambuilding events during their free time because they want to spend time with their families, so make sure that everyone’s on board if you want to do a teambuilding event in the evening.
Also, consider that if your employees are currently undertaking a huge project with a looming deadline, you might want to allow them to finish the project before organising the team building event.
Are you looking after your event data? Learn more about the eight things event planners do that put their organisations at serious risk of breach! Download your eBook here.
5. Use the Outdoor
If possible, it’s always a great idea to utilise the outdoors to make your event more fun for everyone involved.
People spend enough time in an office, so organising the team building event outside can get them more excited and involved in the entire process.
Obviously, this is not always possible because of weather, and there are great indoor activities, but in the end, nothing beats getting out in the fresh air and doing something productive in the process.
6. If Indoors, Make it Exciting!
As said before, you won’t always be able to take your event outdoors, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it fun anyway.
There are great indoor corporate team building activities that can be incredibly fun.
You could set up an escape room that requires team members to solve puzzles and work together to find the exit, organise a team cook-off that challenges your employees to compete in a friendly environment and work together, or simply opt for a board game tournament that allows people to showcase their problem-solving skills.
7. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
Team building events can be awkward– people aren’t keen to expose themselves in front of their colleagues and can be shy, at least at first.
But while it may be difficult, it’s important to try and get everyone out of their comfort zone while still maintaining a positive atmosphere.
An improv workshop can be a great way for everyone to get to know each other and, more importantly, themselves better, and create a stronger bond between everyone involved.
8. Do Some Volunteering
A very straightforward way to get your staff together is to allow them to work towards a worthy cause.
Volunteering can be a very powerful way for people to connect over building something meaningful – whether it’s helping at the local soup kitchen or animal shelter, or doing a project for the local community, showing that your office isn’t just about profit and actually cares about helping others can be a great motivator for your employees.
9. Learn Something New
If your employees don’t come out of the event having learned something new, it won’t be very valuable.
That doesn’t mean that you should take a class together (although that can be a great idea), but learning something new about themselves, their colleagues, and how to better work together should be part of any team building event.
10. Collect Feedback
If you want to know if your corporate event idea was successful, you need a way to see if it had any results. And the easiest way to do this is to simply ask your employees what they thought.
You should organise a survey (preferably anonymous) that allows your staff to voice their thoughts about the team building event – what they liked, what they didn’t like, and what they would like to do in the future.
Read: How to Collect Valuable Data from Events
This will not only provide you with ideas for the next event but will also allow you to see the underlying issues and work to solve them using other methods as well.
Want to learn more about how team work and events are intrinsically linked? We’ve got two great blogs for you to read:
20 Reasons You Should Be Planning Events as a Team
Team work is not only beneficial to individuals (if you can’t learn something from someone, you aren’t looking hard enough!). Here are 20 reasons why it’s good to work as a team in the world of events.
5 Tips to Connect with Team Members Effectively
CEO of PlusVoucherCode, Andrea Boffo, shared with us some of his best tips and tricks to help you better connect with team members and achieve the goals you’ve set around your events.
Want to be a tech savvy event planner? Sign up to our weekly EventTech Talk Newsletter and get updates on all the latest technology trends, discussions and debates shaping the events industry today.