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How Team Building Improves Productivity & Morale
Posted on , in LATEST NEWS and ADVICE & TIPS, by Marcus RichardsYour Team Can Be Productive & Happy
When a routine is established, job descriptions are detailed, and your employees have specific assignments, running a business is easy.
Improving your business by asking or requiring your staff to participate in team building exercises produces reactions ranging from eye-rolling disbelief to outright refusals based on every conceivable excuse.
But the right presentation, mixed with attractive incentives, not only brings employees to the exercise willingly, the resulting increase in productivity and morale is both immediate and measurable.
Team-building time isn’t an excuse to take employees out for the day or several days of fun and games — though both are part of team building.
The change of environment represents a need to focus on the most important aspect of your business: the people who make it work every day. It helps them make their work life more successful, profitable, and efficient while providing them with a greater level of personal satisfaction.
Investing in team building time: 10 reasons it works:
1. Time away from the office is still productive work time
Leaving the coffee, computers and cubicles behind is not a sign that it’s all play at a team-building event.
Collaborative meetings, group exercises, and team challenges are part of a team building event.
The point of increasing productivity and morale is to work on the basics:
- communication
- collaboration
- conflict resolution
- time management skills
Time spent outside the office is new and equalising ground for everyone, providing all staff with a level field of communication.
2. Team building is a window into each others’ interests, strengths and weaknesses
Staff sitting next to one another for months or years may know nothing about one another until a team building event introduces them. They learn each other’s likes, dislikes, assets and liabilities.
This time is the opportunity to strengthen good skills and build weak ones by learning from other staff.
3. Working without office deadlines or pressure
Team building exercises require cooperation for success. Working outside the office, without client calls or company budget restrictions, removes pressure and releases staff to work at a level that’s unhurried, yet focused on producing the best result without compromise.
4. Creative expression without criticism or cost
The atmosphere of team building exercises is one without:
- consequences for what could go wrong
- what might happen if this is tried
- or if that does not work, should we try this next?
There’s no criticism levelled at anyone for suggesting something that’s not only outside the box but requires building an entirely new box. And there’s no cost to new ideas, either financial or emotional, no matter how outrageous or outlandish the ideas sound.
Every idea is plausible, some are possible and in the real office world, a few may reach reality.
5. Time for bravado and bragging rights over the boss
Team building exercises are the one time where it’s OK to beat the bosses at something, and maybe even lord it over them for a while.
But aside from just winning, it’s an opportunity to show senior staff your best stuff, and maybe share your secrets of success with your teammates while also showing you’re a good sport and buying
6. Completing tasks in the face of time issues
Prime time management skills are the essence of productive people and businesses. Setting time limits on team building exercises tests staff’s ability to work together, delegate steps, follow directions and finish assignments within allowed time.
7. The “we’re all in this together” mode builds trust
When all employees, from clerks to senior managers, participate in team building, there’s no exclusivity or exclusion; no feeling of separation between a managers’ “group” and a secretaries’ “group.”
Everyone eats, meets, and works together as a company. There are no executive offices, closed doors or managers’ lounge at team building time. The office walls separating staff don’t exist here, and trust builds as titles are forgotten.
8. Insight into conflict resolution
Nothing pitches a project into failure like conflict among staff. A vital lesson in team building is resolving conflict beyond the “just live with it” stage. Valued employees contribute compromise and cooperation to every situation.
They increase both morale and productivity with steady, problem-free,
9. Networking, or “Oh, you’re the one I talk to on the phone!”
When your staff work from multiple offices, team building brings them closer together in a way that technology cannot.
Even daily meetings via conferencing software is no substitute for bush walking or canoeing together in a national park, exchanging information while admiring the sights.
10. Corporate loyalty: why staff matter in the big picture
The investment of time and money in a team building program lasts beyond the initial experience and expenditure.
Staff talk about it for days, weeks and months, post about the experience on social media and brag to friends and family that your company is a great place to work because you gave the gift of adventure and learning.
Prospective and current employees consider team building as a job perk, and want to join and stay with you. Team building exercises build interest and and create corporate loyalty, and that’s an opportunity to establish and maintain a solid employee base.
Schedule a Team-Building Activity with Our Professionals
Unique Team Building’s programs, ranging from a few hours to several days, offer indoor and outdoor challenges for groups of all sizes and needs.
Whether it’s a cooking challenge, hard-core hiking, office icebreakers, corporate headshots or days away spent in the bush, on the beach, swimming, sightseeing and bonding over a variety of challenges, we’ll customise our adventures to fit your needs.
Contact us for more information, pricing and program availability.
We will tailor to you! 
07 3186 1026