Teambuilding

The main goals of team-building are to improve productivity and motivation. The benefits of teambuilding programs are so significant that many organisations have incorporated teambuilding strategies into their standard training curriculum.
Some benefits include:
- It builds trust and mitigates conflict;
- It reduces stress;
- It improves attitudes;
- It encourages communication;
- It increases collaboration;
- It builds connections that inspire collaboration.

Effective teambuilding means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the bottom line. Your team learns how to work together toward team goals.

So what are ways to encourage teambuilding?
In the sections Video’s, Tips and tricks, Learning activity and Sources and further learning you’ll find many examples and inspiration for teambuilding activities.


Below you’ll find 2 teambuilding activities to exercise teambuilding within your organisation:

1. Random Request

Break the group into teams of 3 or more. Make a list of tasks for each team to do as a group. Give the list to each team, along with a deadline by which they must complete all tasks. The activity will ask them to solve and answer a wide range of questions, puzzles, problems and challenges. They should work as a team and create solutions and answers in as quick a time as possible. Whoever completes the most tasks the quickest, wins! You can create your own point system according to task difficulty if you want. Below you will find an example that can serve as inspiration for the Random Request teambuilding activity.
 

 
2. Top secret – the mission

In this activity, team members have to imagine that they are working for the secret service and have a very important job to do. They are in charge of keeping secret some very important information that is contained within a very fragile container. They must design a method to transport the secret information out of the building and to safety.
The only way to save the information is to drop the information out of the window to safety. BUT remember that the secret information is kept safely in a very fragile container, and… the container must not break or crack as the information will leak out. 
Activity information: 
·         The container is an egg
·         The egg will be dropped from an upstairs window
·         The egg cannot crack or break or the secret information will leak out!
·         Teams have some materials to help them:
- newspaper
- string
- plastic bags
- sellotape
- paper clips
- paper

Divide the group into small groups of three to five people and give them the resources. They have 15 minutes to use the resources to develop and create and idea that will be able to dropping the egg from the window onto the ground without breaking the egg. Once the time is up, they will have to test the ideas by dropping the egg out of an upstairs window and seeing if it survived, or if it splats on the floor!

TIPS AND TRICKS

The most successful, memorable teambuilding events are ones that don’t feel like a day at the office. Spending time together, sharing an experience or working towards a common goal allows bonding to happen more organically and far more effectively.
It turns out that happiness and learning are tied very closely together.

Trying new things with your staff can generate vibes among employees, which in turn benefits the business itself. Choosing something unique and slightly outside of people’s comfort zones can encourage them to come together in new ways.

With this in mind, one of the best and enjoyable team building activities is Escape Room. An Escape Room is a physical adventure game in which players are locked in a room and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles and escape within a set time limit. This concept is very popular as team building exercise. Probably there are several Escape Rooms in your area. Take your team to one and see the result yourself!

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