The importance of team building activities
Read our fantastic guest post by the team at Give A Grad A Go.
Company Culture
At the heart of every functioning business is a healthy company culture.
Without this, your team is more likely to fracture. And, as a result, productivity is likely to drop.
So, don’t neglect team building activities, team socials, and company events. On the face of it, they may seem trivial. But out-of-office socialising helps cement team integration in a way that time in the workplace cannot!
It is also becoming an increasingly important factor for graduates when searching for graduate jobs.
A positive company culture that encourages a work-life balance plays a big part in employee job satisfaction. So, it is not surprising that graduates will consider this when searching for a job.
By organising regular team-building events, you are guaranteed to keep your graduate employees engaged and motivated at work. You also demonstrate proactively that your business is a company with good culture.
Here is a list of our best team building ideas to bring your team closer together:
Team building exercises for your company
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Cooking classes
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Escape room
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Treasure Hunt
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Quiz
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Sports day
Inflatable parks
Inflata Nation inflatable parks are the perfect place for hosting fun corporate team building events.
Allowing your employees to let off steam and take a break from their busy working environment will not only allow them to de-stress, but will also encourage them to bond as a team and improve their communication.
Challenges such as the Inflata Race and Inflata Duel offer employees the chance to use collaboration and teamwork skills to win these exhilarating challenges! It also allows graduates to gain leadership experience.
All of these skills are essential to creating a healthy company culture. And, by organising these regular team building exercises, you can maintain a positive working environment and an ultimately productive workplace.
Why teambuilding is important for company culture
Company culture is what attracts people to your company and a positive one can help to retain your staff.
Cultivating a work culture that is supportive and makes your employees feel valued can be instrumental to their productivity and a successful business.
Here are some ways that team building can help you foster a good company culture so your staff can thrive.
Encouraging productivity
By taking part in problem-solving team exercises, both employers and employees benefit from how team-building activities increase productivity and produce a positive company culture.
Giving your employees an opportunity to experience challenges that are enjoyable and unrelated to work can help them gain a better insight into what makes them work well as a team.
When everyone is taking part in a fun challenge and helping each other to succeed within team-building activities, this can transcend into a positive work culture back in the office.
And it is great to see your team identify what their strengths and weaknesses are, and approach problems with a positive attitude within these activities. This can strengthen your team and ultimately boost their performance within your business.
Boosting morale
Every employer knows that looking after the mental wellbeing of your employees is vital to a successful business.
So, if your graduate employees are feeling demotivated and are not being recognised for their achievements, they will become less engaged and will not feel happy about coming in to work every day.
By organising regular team-building days out or after-work company socials, you are recognising all your employees’ hard work and rewarding the effort they contribute to the business with fun company perks.
And if your employees feel that their achievements are being recognised then they are more likely to stay working within your company for longer and even recommend your company to others!
Communication
It is likely that some of your employees will spend most of their day with their own team. As a result, they won’t have a lot of time to get to know other staff who work within different departments.
This is especially true for new hires or graduate employees, who may not feel comfortable enough to talk to staff that they haven’t spent much time with yet.
Your new employees may continually feel like they like are on the outside of the group because they haven’t been given a chance to bond with others. This could be a sign that you need to improve your company culture.
Team building challenges are the perfect way to resolve this!
Company socials that lets employees let loose and take part in exciting challenges with their co-workers, such as a corporate day-out at Inflata Nation inflatable theme parks, are guaranteed to strengthen and unify teams, regardless of how long everyone has worked there.
Creativity and Learning
If your team is heavily reliant on independent working, team-building activities can be a refreshing opportunity for employees to learn from how their colleagues tackle problems and become more resilient together.
Working as a team to devise a solution to a challenge or create a strategy to win a game can help employees develop. It helps individuals take onboard each other's different ideas and ways of working to develop their own skills at work.
And, importantly, learning from others and gaining fresh perspectives within team-building exercises is vital to nurturing an open-minded and supportive company culture.
If you’re not taking onboard new ideas and points of view, your employees won’t feel heard. And you may even miss out on some brilliant ideas!
Leadership
Allowing employees to take a more hands-on role in team-building activities can be beneficial to how they work.
When given the opportunity to manage a team and delegate a strategy to team mates, employees can learn how to lead their team to success. At the same time, they can understand how to support those in the team (such as graduate employees) who may need guidance.
Team building and leadership within these activities are both instrumental to good company culture.
A team that feels that they are being given strong direction as well as being supported by their team leads is more likely to perform better and enjoy their time at work.
All of these benefits of team-building activities should show you why company culture is important to the wellbeing of your employees and the success of your business.
With good company culture becoming one of the main qualities to look for in a company for graduates, it is important to find ways to make everyone feel involved.
So, celebrate all the hard work your team does, and reward them with exciting social events that will bring the entire company closer together!
This article was written by guest blogger Katie from https://www.giveagradago.com/. The graduate jobs and recrutiment experts.