Create a culture that allows your staff and business to thrive with the right corporate team building activities. Company culture involves the environment, values and goals of a business and its staff. If your company was a human, it’d be its personality. Businesses like Google and Twitter lead the way in building happy, positive company cultures that attract and retain a high-performing workforce — but how do you use corporate team-building activities to engender a successful company culture that will benefit staff and profits?
‘Team-building exercises’ is widely searched online, yet despite its popularity, many employers are slow to realise the benefits of corporate team-building days. Find out the benefits of team-building exercises on company culture and how encouraging corporate excursions for your staff can help take your business to the next level with this handy guide…
Benefit 1: Communication
A breakdown in communication can lead to significant efficiency failures for your business. Not to mention creating an inhibited company culture with disconnected employees. Solving issues that affect your business can only be achieved with clear, concise and confident discussions between members of staff — which is where team-building exercises come in.
Skiing lessors or a treasure hunt are perfect examples of successful corporate team building exercises, as they encourage interactivity. Choosing a team-building exercise that is fun, original and challenging will help your staff engage with the task at hand and you’ll have a greater chance of everyone pulling together to get the job done — a process that will then be adopted in the office.
It’s important that these activities take place on ‘neutral ground’ outside of the office, to inspire communication free from office politics. Help break down those barriers further by choosing an activity where teams must follow instructions and swap ideas to help bolster creative thinking in the workplace and help individuals learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Each staff member is different. Some find it easy to talk to others in a professional environment, while others don’t. Once those barriers of communication have been removed, your staff will feel more confident approaching each other for help and guidance on work-related matters, which will encourage a more open and fluid company culture.
Benefit 2: Productivity
By boosting engagement and communication, you could see productivity increase as a result of your team-building day. The more engaged and productive your staff are, the more efficient your daily operations will be, which both have a positive effect on your profit margin.
In fact, Gallup research suggests that engaged employees enjoy 17% productivity gains, and 41% fewer absent days. What’s more, highly engaged companies are reported by Gallup to be approximately 21% more profitable than those that aren’t.
Choosing an activity that incorporates building or creating something will increase originality and imagination between your team members. These skills can then be transferred to the office. Plus, working together outside of the office will help highlight personal strengths and weaknesses among staff, which will give management a greater idea of the type of training and development courses that could improve performance.
Benefit 3: Office morale
As an employer, hosting a corporate day shows that you genuinely care about morale in your workplace. According to the Department of Economics and the University of Warwick, happy employees are up to 20% more productive than other workers. Since staff morale is intricately linked to happiness, you should implement initiatives, like team-building activities, companywide to ensure that your staff feel positive when they walk into work.
Often, staff will look forward to fun and exciting corporate days. Many expert psychologists have conducted experiments showing that anticipation is a key stage of cheerfulness. According to Action for Happiness, an organisation that helps people take practical steps to create a happier society, feeling good about the future is important for our happiness and motivation. If you want to encourage your staff to be ambitious, perhaps it’s worth beginning by taking action and finding the time to book a fun, group activity that you think they’d enjoy.
Benefit 4: Chance to bond
In the working environment, we’ll often interact with people who wouldn’t normally fall into our social circles. Therefore, it’s critical that you find a way to bring your staff together — and holding a regular corporate day out could be the simplest plan.
Hosting a corporate day encourages staff to socialise with each other, which in turn builds trust. Senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, Jim Dougherty, claims that: “Managers will never learn the truth about their company unless they have their employees’ trust.”
To achieve this level of trust, choose an activity centered on teamwork, communication and group planning. This increased sense of familiarity builds a greater personal connection, which means your staff will feel more comfortable discussing problems — and potential solutions. This will allow for more efficient problem-mapping processes to overcome issues that could be holding your company back without your knowledge.
Benefit 5: Staff retention
These activities could also see staff retention rates increase in your business. Assuming that the advantages stated above come to fruition, your workplace will be a more productive, happy, sociable, communicative, and trusting place to spend a weekday. This positive company culture should decrease the number of staff choosing to resign and keep talent within your company.
This theory has been researched by Columbia University and some positive results have been found.
The research showed that the chance of job turnover at a business with a positive company culture is only 13.9%, while the likelihood of a high job turnover rate in places with poor company cultures is 48.4%.
A high employee turnover rate can negatively impact your businesses reputation, as well as the investment into staff training you require. Consequently, you lose experience, money, time, and the best chance of attracting a wide network of new, quality talent. It’s much wiser to devote a small portion of company time to constructive, team-building corporate events in order to start improving your employee turnover rate.
Take advantage of the many benefits offered by corporate team-building activities. If you want to boost profits, productivity and processes; search online for fun, team-building activities suitable for colleagues.
Sources:
http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/208487/right-culture-not-employee-happiness.aspx
https://tech.co/team-building-activities-productivity-2017-06
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-company-culture-2062000
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238640
https://www.gthankyou.com/blog/research-shows-happy-employees-are-more-productive-by-gthankyou
https://www.business2community.com/sales-management/boost-sales-team-morale-year-end-01973983
http://www.tgdaily.com/enterprise/9-benefits-of-team-building-activities-in-the-workplace
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100218125204.htm
http://www.actionforhappiness.org/10-keys-to-happier-living/have-goals-to-look-forward-to
