Is corporate team building necessary?

Importance Of Team Building

Team building is essentially bringing together the employees in an organization under one roof literally, either the entire staff or selected few. For smaller organizations, it could be the former, where all employees are part of team building games and activities whereas for a larger organization like a multi-national company or an organization with offices in various cities and countries this may become a bit too difficult to organize logistically and even objectively.

Why this is important?

The basic aim of such activities is to let employees mingle with each other and get to know each other. At a formal or official capacity, most would know the other but at an informal and personal level, the interactions need to start to happen and these kinds of activities provide the right forum or platform to do so. The ulterior reason is undoubtedly to help the team collaborate better with one other that develops from the personal communication and rapport that each have with the other. Team building activities can be interpreted as the much required glue or a binding agent that helps connect your employees cohesively with each other. The connection originates and grows when people meet each other and communicate both at formal and informal levels; and when they do so and meet each other more often a trust is created that can be unparalleled.

Why is corporate team building necessary?

The first question here is whether it is worth all the time and money for companies to invest in team building. And the answer is a big yes as long as companies do not want their human resources to work in isolated patches; just like single island pieces scattered on an ocean’s surface. If you belong to a company culture that believes so, it is better to move out as fast as possible until and unless you are part of an organization that is over-achieving its targets and prospering by doing so. The chances, however, of this happening is minuscule – negligible.

Organisations need its human assets to work hand-in-hand with each other. Departments and teams need to collaborate and coordinate, communicate and interact to work effectively and efficiently. If you want your human resources to have a cohesive and unified attitude towards work and you are serious about achieving your business objectives and vision; then your organisation needs to ensure employee engagement and that too in a well-planned manner. 

A perfect example of corporate team building activity is a cook-it-up exercise. Cooking involves different ingredients; it requires not only cooking skills, but preparation and presentation are also equally important – this means that a team should typically have people from different backgrounds, skills and interest to make this activity or a project a success. Cook-it up is an activity that is based on cooking but here what teams cook is what everyone gets to eat. Hence it is important that the activity is thoroughly collaborated well where members work with each other, in unison to use everyone’s strengths to be more productive and bear better results. The better the understanding between the team members, better will the dish be cooked and will be effective in impressing the taste buds of others more fruitfully. Understanding levels between team members are enhanced and bettered when they learn to work together and this can be reinforced and stressed upon by organizing effective team building activities.

Reasons why a corporate should invest and plan team building activities:-

1.  Helps directly in improving productivity levels of employees.

Team and individual productivity can increase only when team members know each – they may not be best of friends but they have affable and amicable relationship with each other. In the work context, as a manager you would want this because it would directly impact your team’s results and efficiency. One of the keys to develop and strengthen inter-personal relationships and enhance communication between your team members is to allow them to network and get to know each other well. That is exactly what a planned team building activity like Raft Building achieves. That is why most good team managers take their team outs for weekend lunches and organize get-together. The purpose is to create an environment where team members can interact and socialize with one another.

2.  Helps in creating a positive competitive working environment

That is true! When team members work with complete focus on the organizational objectives while also taking care that they encourage each other as a team and also this happens in a fun-filled environment, the competitive spirit is invariably there but it is positively—oriented. Here, each one wants to win but not at the cost of the other; the attitude is to do the best job while ensuring that everyone else is also trying to match up and that the working environment is fun and enjoyable. This way, the chance of the task becoming a success is high because the motive – the bigger picture - is never lost.

3.  Team building is essential to encourage creativity and innovation of individuals

Group discussions and team meetings are more interesting and result-oriented when people are motivated to put their brains together and come up with creative solutions. When your team is strong on their inter-personal skills and are willing to collaborate with each other, they will do a good job of brain-storming and coming up with practical and novel ideas.

4.  Most importantly, good team building activities is also about improving the communication skills amongst teams and team members.

With good communication comes better understanding and a stronger bonding, which invariably leads to making your team work as a united force. And remember nothing is more crucial for your organization goals than having a team that is united and works in complete harmony, at all cost.

Team building is important and the sooner organisations realize this, the more time they get to gear up and prepare well for organizing some incredible team activities. This is one effective way of investing in your biggest asset – your workforce that is responsible for achieving for your organizational goals and your corporate missions.