Outdoor adventures, paintballing and clay pigeon shooting – it sounds like a lot of fun but how can it help your staff to work more effectively?
shutterstock.com/Martin Bilek
Companies are taking their staff on team building activities in order to try to get more out of them and improve their collective output. This could be something as simple as an exercise in the office or a full blown day or weekend away taking part in fun activities with the aim of emerging with a stronger functioning team at the end.
But team building hasn’t been without its critics who say that many exercises are nothing more than an excuse for a day away from the usual daily operations and add nothing to the office dynamic. In some cases, these claims are correct if the activity is simply a badly planned afterthought. That’s why team building should become an integral part of becoming successful. It’s easy to do wrong but when done correctly, it can have huge advantages.
Instead of simply deciding to go out for the day, team building should be focused and have clear objectives. There’s nothing wrong with going paintballing as long as the sole purpose isn’t to bruise the colleagues that you’ve taken a dislike to. Any activity you do choose should be relevant to the aims you are setting out to achieve and should also be enjoyable and challenging for those taking part.
At the end of the day, the outcomes of the activities should be discussed and assessed to see how productive it has been and to identify other areas that need to be addressed in order to have the best team you possibly can at the company.
photo: www.photo-stock.info / © Matjaz Boncina
There’s a growing number of companies offering a range of novel ideas for team building or incentive activities. Taking part in an engaging task such as blindfolded driving or defuse the bomb missions can put staff through their paces and are available in the region. As is the case with evening events, you can use your imagination to conjure up some out of the ordinary ideas for team building activities. If you’ve got the ideas, a proficient events company will have the tools in order for them to become reality.
The many ideal destinations for team building in the region often go hand in hand with the beautiful landscapes on offer locally. There’s plenty of scope for activities to take place both indoors and outdoors.
Even if your company isn’t one for team building, there’s still no reason why you can’t get out of the office to engage in other work related activities. Most people love having meetings away from the office because the change of scenery works wonders for productivity and can often have team building qualities of their own. You will soon find that you will get the best out of your staff when you think outside of the office as well as outside of the box.
