Team building is a good way of creating great results outside the office or workplace environment. Not all issues, concerns, and problems in an organization can be resolved by trainings, meetings, or memos. Sometimes it is important to take your employees outside the comforts and discomforts of the office settings. According to many human resource managers, sometimes a change in environment is what your employees need to effect certain changes in the company. Outdoor team building also enhances interactions between employees as it gives them a chance to bond outside the confines of their workplace spaces.
Nonetheless, to get the most out of any team building activities and to establish whether it will be effective or not, it is important to have clear objectives. Without understanding what you want to achieve with the team building activity, it is daunting to measure the success of your efforts. When organizing a team building event, therefore, it is imperative to weigh it against your company’s objectives.
Great Objects for Successful Team Building Activities
For inspiration, here are some great objectives that have proven to work for many organizations:
• To improve self-regulation in the team
• To allow team members to know each other
• To allow every employee to understand their strengths and weaknesses, and how these characteristic can help them grow
• To identify the strengths of every team and to leverage them in achieving company’s objectives
• To enhance and develop team collaboration
• To motivate employees and boost their morale
• To enhance and develop effective communication between employees
• To make workplace peaceful and more enjoyable to employees
• To maximize employee output and productivity
• To set goals for every employee and ensure that every individual is committed to these goals
How to Ensure Alignment To Company’s Objectives
Team building often occur at periodic training events or annual retreats organized by the company. In most cases, training personnel or event organizers use previous years’ agenda and only update the elements that they deem to have changed since the last event. However, this shouldn’t be the case because organizations are dynamic entities. If your organizing is constantly striving to achieve certain business goals, your team building activities should also evolve to support such goals.
Therefore, instead of using previous years’ team building activities’ objectives as starting point, you should endeavor to succinctly define your objectives and tailor them to your current business goals. Like any other company training activity, your outdoor team building activities should have clear learning objectives and the activities should support such objectives.