Team building activities - when done right – will facilitate bonding within the team and reduce everyone’s stress. When you pick the wrong types of activities, employees may resent the waste of time and money or see it as an attempt to force what isn’t happening naturally in the workplace. Here are five team building activities your employees will actually love, all of which will encourage communication, cooperation and camaraderie.
An Escape Room
If you want to encourage teamwork to solve challenging problems and build camaraderie, it is hard to top taking your team to an Atlanta escape room if you’re near the area. People have to face real challenges like locks and puzzles, and they need to work together to win. Most escape room venues have rooms with different story lines, so you could take your team to a short outing after work, make an afternoon of it or dedicate a whole day to the challenge. Mix and match teams to help everyone get to know each other, or let teams compete against each other to add to the fun and encourage them to work better together. They’ll get far more out of it than the average “trust fall”.
Scavenger Hunts
Scavenger hunts are infinitely customizable. You can use it to orient new hires in the building as they follow clues and ask questions to learn about the facility. Or you can organize groups to go on a hunt around the city. You could ask each group to take silly pictures that they can show to everyone after they return.
Volunteering
Volunteering can be used as a team-building activity. Perhaps you could take your team to cook and serve meals at a homeless shelter. Or you might want to take them to help build homes given to the homeless. Another option is encouraging employees to fundraise for a charity.
All of these activities get your employees out of their comfort zone, start them working together toward common goals, and help them see the benefits of selfless teamwork.
Events Out on the Water
This can take several forms. You could take your group whitewater rafting as it requires teamwork to get through the adventure. The excitement and thrills make it attractive to many. You can find white water rafting courses around the country, though some areas are only home to manmade courses. An alternative is taking everyone whale watching. It is a pleasant, relaxing activity that allows everyone to socialize at their own pace. These activities can be scheduled as morning, afternoon or overnight events.
A Cook-Off
Here’s a fun team-building activity with results everyone could enjoy. Divide your team into several smaller teams. Pick a food category. Ask them to come up with something delicious that will get shared. It could end in disaster or dessert. You could require everything have a common theme, whether stating that they all have to use a single ingredient or have a certain shape at the end. If you don’t want to do a full cook-off, you can host a cooking lesson for your team, instead. Then again, if you’ve taken everyone to a cooking class, you can follow up with a cook-off to test their skills.
The best team building activities are fun activities people want to attend. They facilitate real teambuilding and make your business a great place to work all at the same time.
