Team Building Events: Must-Have’s or a Waste of Time?

Summer is a very popular time for big corporations and small companies alike to plan team building activities and events for their employees. These can range anywhere from daytrips and weekend trips to skydiving, afternoon barbeques, or simply after work drinks.
Either way, these events take time to plan and time to attend. Is it really worth the cost and time?
If done correctly, absolutely!
Team building events help boost employee morale and create a more cohesive workplace. Employees who may only see each other in passing suddenly have the opportunity to chat about their shared experiences and create a relationship that could come in handy when working together in the future. That’s a big win because employees who are more comfortable around each other will work better together and be more comfortable raising issues or offering suggestions to each other.
Remember when you were in school and you would hope to be put on a team together with your friend? Same goes here, except maybe now it’s less about being able to gossip and laugh the whole time and more about being comfortable working together. After all, it’s always nice when you get along with your coworkers, right?
Like I mentioned above, the key is to do team building events right and encourage employee participation. After all – if you’re not there, you can’t team build.

3 Tips for Getting Team Building Events Right

1. Make sure there are options for people to do different things. Ex: “If you don’t want to jump out of a plane, join us for a barbeque while we watch the landings.”
2. Plan in advance. Give people time to block it off on the calendars and make sure they remain available on the big day.
3. Avoid Fridays. This is especially true during the summer when many people tend to cut out early or take Fridays off for long weekends.

Here at OpenView we have a great operations team that plans some great events like paintball, F1 Racing, and cooking classes. Take the time to come up with fun ideas and your employees will thank you with better collaboration and hard work.

What do you think? Are team building events a worthwhile investment or should companies not bother?