Team building is a wide term encompassing a large variety of activities that focus on improving social relations between members of an organization. Mixing groups during the event allows to spice things up and make people more open.
Benefits of Team Building
Team building serves not only fun, relaxation and bonding. The most important aspects of team building are:
- Setting the right goals
- Clarifying the roles within structure
- Solving existing problems
- Building relations and enhancing communication
Defining a clear goal for the event helps the employees to stay focused and encourages them to actively participate.
Equally important is the role definition, which allows people to recognise the importance of duties carried out by their co-workers.
Engaging in problem solving together can build a feeling of community and help develop the right procedures.
Difficulties in Team Building
There are many challenges when it comes to team building. It is often misused as a universal cure for all the ailments of the company, when in fact the roots of the problem go much deeper.
You have to remember that team building events are a form of internal marketing, targeted at the employees. It is a tool suitable to many different occasions:
- to celebrate a recent success
- to encourage employees after a setback
- to bring the team together in the face of upcoming crisis
- to help them focus on important project
It is crucial to match the chosen event to the occasion and overall goal.
Ideas For a Team Building Event
A team building event can be almost anything – from visiting a local pub after work to a few days long getaway to a mountain resort.
Even a simple trip to the park for a picnic and engaging in some friendly sport rivalry can be a great way to relieve tension and bond. A dinner at the restaurant will also work almost every time.
It is good to complement these activities with a nice surprise, such as handing out small gifts or making a group photo. Making such an event into a tradition will also work wonders to the sense of belonging of the employees.
Still, if you decide to go through with a bigger event, it is important to properly balance the entertainment and education. Great fun can be intertwined with interesting workshops, where we mix up the group and everyone gets to know each other better.
Mix Your Teams: Let Everybody Meet Everyone Else
When it comes to team building, it is good to think about creating as many opportunities for people to meet as possible. Mixing groups during the event allows to spice things up and make people more open. It is also a great approach to have employees from different departments get to know each other.
However, getting just the right seating by yourself can be a tedious and frustrating task, especially if you want everybody to meet everyone else. Fortunately, nowadays we can leave that to the computer. Programs such as Mixerseater will help you develop a perfect seating for the attendees, allowing you to maximize the gain from the event.
With Mixerseater you can arrange a networking event, where everyone meets eye-to-eye, or divide them into groups depending on:
- interests
- line of work
- veteran / new employee
- any other factor of your choosing.
Your networking can have only one round, but we strongly recommend against that. Having 3 or even more rounds, when people swap their places and meet a completely different group of colleagues is a lot more fun.
There is also a very good Networking Events Organizers Group on LinkedIn. No questions regarding networking events, including speed networking, remain unanswered, so be sure to join!
