How Important is Team Building For Today’s Businesses?

In an ever-evolving work landscape, the importance of team building remains a constant to instill company culture and is the making of a successful team.

In the context of 2022, remote teams and hybrid working environments mean that today’s businesses need to put in extra effort to ensure a positive team spirit.

In addition, as great resignation looms over the job market, employees expect more from their employers. They want to feel valued, to work in a more positive work environment, and to be their authentic selves working alongside other employees in an effective team.

As a result, team-building activities are the order of the day to build a cohesive team.

Let’s explore why team-building exercises are essential to modern businesses.

Why is Team Building Important?

Effective team-building events can have a plethora of positives for your business. From increased employee-centric positives to broader improvements across your business, there are many benefits of team building.

Team-building Activities Boost Employee Morale

The first point to make is that a fun, engaging, memorable team-building event can work wonders to improve employee morale.

Before we get into the more intricate benefits involved, this alone is a reason to organize a team-building activity to entertain workers.

Employees need light relief from the strains of their work day every now and then. Getting together with other departments and other team members to do something fun is a great way to mix things up.

Therefore, while a successful team-building activity will hope to achieve more than just entertainment, a founding principle of an effective team-building exercise is that it should encourage employee collaboration through a fun, exciting format.

Effective teams are founded upon happy employees.

Team-building Exercises Create High-Performing Teams

What is the secret to a high-performing team? How do you ensure high levels of productivity in the workplace?

These are the kind of questions that keep team leaders up at night.

There is, of course, no single answer to the question.

However, collaboration is often king when it comes to productivity. Teams work best when they collaborate effectively with other team members and work together on various projects.

The old adage that a team is greater than the sum of its parts rings true.

Therefore, any team-building exercises based around improving communication skills, interpersonal skills, and team problem-solving skills will have a knock-on effect on productivity. Encouraging employees to get involved in simulated team-based tasks can motivate employees to tackle similar problems they face in their day-to-day work together.

Of course, happier teams are also known to be more productive. Therefore, any team-building event fostering employee engagement will likely improve team performance.

Engaged employees care more about their work and want to actively participate in actions toward achieving shared goals. In short, they’re happier at work because they know the ‘why’ of their work and are engaged in the pursuit of improving work performance.

Going back to the context of 2022, many articles report record-breaking levels of disengagement as employees feel overworked and undervalued.

Put simply, today’s businesses must do more to counteract this trend, and fun team-building activities designed to build positive relationships at work may form part of the solution.

Team-building Events Lead to Positive Relationships

Accomplishing a task together is always a nice feeling.

We, humans, are social animals and like to feel part of a community.

As corny as it sounds, a workplace should be a community in which we feel comfortable among peers who become our friends. We should not be strangers to other team members but instead should have positive relationships that enable more smooth daily operations.

The right team-building event can go a long way toward this relationship-building that is fundamental to a team’s success.

Great team-building events encourage employees to work together in fun activities that promote open communication, fresh ideas, and experimenting with new skills. Accomplish enough tasks together, and employees soon develop trust in each team member.

As many companies move to hybrid or remote working models, co-workers experience fewer opportunities to work collaboratively and communicate in person face-to-face. The result is that there are fewer opportunities to develop those positive workplace relationships.

Team-building activities can undoubtedly form part of the solution needed to build relationships on which strong teams depend.

Team-building Activities Support Company Culture

Today’s businesses need to have well-defined and clearly communicated company values.

That’s because the modern worker is increasingly aware of the importance of working toward a common goal.

Employee engagement relies on everybody understanding and believing in the company goals as this frames the reasoning behind work. Employees feel valued when they feel aligned to those company goals and to a company’s culture.

Team-building events allow company leaders to live out those company values instead of making them seem forced or fake.

A great team-building activity can go a long way to supporting critical parts of strong company culture.

Teambuilding:

• encourages trust in each other
• encourages collaboration
• encourages creativity
• brings staff together (leaders and employees)
• encourages communication

Team-building activities support any company culture that prioritizes a positive, productive workplace.

How to Organize a Successful Team-building Event

Coming up with fun team-building activity ideas can be overwhelming for a team leader.

You want to avoid those overly forced, cringy icebreakers and want to create events where employees enjoy spending time with each other.

We’ve established that team-building events can increase productivity and harness effective communication. Yet, a horror team-building activity can have an adverse effect as awkward events only serve to disengage employees.

Yet, team leaders need to incorporate team building into their calendar, regardless of the risks.

Your team-building event should:

• be fun and something to look forward to
• be informative
• be the right balance between challenging and easy
• offer the chance to practice new skills
• include an element of competition
• include an element of celebration
• build bridges between departments
• offer opportunities for employees to show leadership
• improve employee engagement

A potentially tall order. Thankfully, help is at hand.

Don’t fret over taking the time to plan out sophisticated team-building exercises. Instead, we offer fully customizable solutions to plan and carry out engaging yet educational activities that promote team bonding.

Since we know that team bonding is especially a challenge for remote teams, we offer both in-person and virtual events for the entire team. Remote employees shouldn’t miss out on any fun, so we have some intelligently-designed online events that can help virtual teams perform optimally.

Virtual Teambuilding With Making Teams

At Making Teams, we have over 15 years of experience providing team-building solutions to various clients across Asia, both in-person and online.

Specifically, we understand that today’s businesses need to combat loneliness in remote employees and do their utmost also to prevent Zoom fatigue. However, they also need to provide opportunities to learn and improve.

That’s why we’ve created numerous virtual activities that entertain and improve skills.

Here are some great examples of online team-building exercises created by Making Teams. These activities help your virtual team develop strong interpersonal relationships while also honing crucial problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills.

Virtual Escape Room

Virtual teams work together in a race against time to solve puzzles to escape sealed virtual rooms.

Employees work together and properly manage their time, occasionally delegating responsibilities to allow for work on several tasks at once toward a solution.

This is a fun exercise, but it can occasionally be difficult! Each team member must contribute in some way to solve problems.

Virtual Amazing Race

Team members are divided into groups for the “The Amazing Race” virtual team-building activity, which involves competing in a series of challenging tasks modeled after the well-known television programme.

To win the race in which they virtually travel the world, they must work together, assign tasks, and combine their skill sets.

They will be given various tasks and fact-finding assignments with a range of potential solutions, connecting with individuals in real-time through video conference. They might have to compete virtually in a Muay Thai challenge in Thailand or solve Japanese puzzles in Tokyo.

This task tests various skills while injecting that competitive element!

Virtual Treasure Hunt

This exercise sees teams explore a virtual world through VR and videos. Team members need to complete challenging tasks and puzzles that reveal clues toward the hidden treasure. The cryptic challenges can be a real test. This exercise is perfect for international companies as it serves as an opportunity to learn about other cultures.

Virtual Team Building

All the above activities are fully customizable to your context as a company. All tasks and challenges test communication and problem-solving skills in an engaging manner as participants enjoy a memorable experience while getting to grips with a meaningful task.

Herein lies the essence of the success of these virtual team-building activities: they are something to look forward to but also something to look back and reflect on.

They constitute a real learning activity where colleagues can debrief and see what lessons they can take going forward in their daily work.

If you’d like to hear more about our virtual team building offering or our in-person events, don’t hesitate to reach out.