Companies across the world recognise how important it is to keep morale high among their workers. This helps to explain – among other things – why they spend so much on it, the Mirror having reported that UK businesses plough an average of 305 per employee into team-building activities.
However, when you are planning your own firm’s next team-building weekend or similar corporate event, there is a wide range of activities that you can try, and which don’t necessarily need to leave a great dent in your budget. Of course, corporate events can be of different types too. Besides team building, these events could be something like a corporate wellness program (visit this company website to know more) where they are introduced to different aspects of physical and mental health. Such programs can be ongoing, continuous ones, with main events happening once a while. Apart from this, it’s important to hold team building activities once a while too. Even more crucially, the below ideas are known to deliver results.
Two truths and a lie
It helps to start off any corporate team-building day with an icebreaker that will enable the participants to get to know each other in a fun way. This one largely explains itself – you simply have all of your workers sit in a circle and ask each one to come up with two truths and one lie about themselves.
For each person, the group must then vote on which of their statements was the false one, after which, the person can reveal this to the group.
Anyone who has ever watched the popular TV comedy panel show Would I Lie To You? will know that there is a certain art to this activity. It helps if the lie is believable and mundane-sounding, and at least one of the truths seems outrageous or unlikely.
Ping pong move along
Something lightly sporty is a good choice for getting your participants breathless, laughing and smiling – all of that blood pumping and the inevitable laughing and banter will really help to foster good relations.
That’s why we especially liked the look of this ping pong move along activity explained in greater detail by Venture Team Building. It’s all about getting your team to move 15 ping pong balls across four tables without them coming into direct contact with the balls.
Company book club
Sometimes, the idea of basing a team-building weekend around physical pursuits may seem a little too stereotypical, and not necessarily to the liking of some of your employees.
This may lead you to instead consider a rather more sedate alternative – a company ‘book club’ activity that helps to improve team communication. It begins before the event with the participants deciding together on a book that they would like to read, and which you might purchase for them.
Then, every morning or at another set time, one of your staff members reads a chapter of the book, before another participant leads a discussion about the meaning of the chapter and the potential relevance of this to the team or wider company.
An arts and crafts or culinary workshop
Your workers may feel that they couldn’t draw a figure or bake a cake to save their lives, but there’s no doubt of how enjoyable such a creative activity can be in a team-building context. After all, everyone will likely be at different levels of skill or experience in the activity in question, so no one should have much reason to feel embarrassed.
There are also many venues that are well-equipped to host such team-building events as the above. Our own Château Bouffémont is a highly renowned chateau for corporate event days in its own right, in large part because of the extensive range of activities that we can offer for boosting staff morale, including wine tasting, perfume making, creative workshops and more.
