The words “team building” conjures visions of falling backwards into coworkers’ arms, but it is really as simple as creating a strong team spirit – and never has that been more important than now. A whopping 60% of white-collar employees feel disengaged from their workplace (Robert Walters), and amid waves of resignations and discontent, firms need to work harder than ever to ensure teams feel connected.
The benefits of team building are clear for all parties, especially now that hybrid working has reduced face to face contact. We are social beings, after all, and whilst flexible working has brought many benefits, managers now have to work harder to create and maintain a strong team spirit, and doing so is essential. It improves company buy in and loyalty, fosters creativity and productivity, and is also important for staff welfare and mental health. Put simply, a team with a strong team spirit produce better results, and will be happier doing it.
Successful team building centres on getting staff to laugh and have fun together, ideally with a degree of creativity, collaboration or friendly competition built in. Here are some tips:
Choose activities tailored to your team
Begin by understanding who they are and what they would enjoy. If you have a team who are all golfers or wine buffs, your task might seem obvious, but most teams are (hopefully) more diverse than that.
Inclusivity is key
Activities need to engage the whole team and be accessible to everyone. Confident workers are happier and perform better.
Respect your team’s boundaries
Most staff expect a Christmas party, and will possibly be socialising outside of work anyway, but team building activities are nevertheless work. Don’t expect your team to give up their spare time for it.
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Build team building into the regular work week
Regular challenges or competitions are great way for the team to engage and have fun with each other. Build variety into the challenges to ensure they are accessible and winnable by everyone, and come up with small, but fun prizes.
Be creative
The best team building exercises are often the unique, memorable ones.
Consult with the team
As with most things, you will get the best result when the team are involved and bought into the process.
About Fram Search
Established in 2010 by Simon Roderick, a recruiter with 20 years City recruitment experience, Fram Search is a specialist financial services recruitment consultancy. We focus on permanent and interim recruitment in the UK & internationally.
We provide high quality contingent and retained recruitment to boutiques and global brands. We have long established relationships and access to deep talent pools. Fram takes a highly consultative approach, and we have a quality over quantity ethos. We are proud that our contingent fill rate is nearly three the industry average and we augment our retained search methodology with rigorous psychometric testing. Champions of diversity & inclusion, all staff have undertaken unconscious bias training.
Please contact us on 01525 864 372 / [email protected] to learn more.
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