Importance of Team Building in the Modern Age

By Mia Turlington

December 22 2020 - The workplace continues to constantly evolve. Traditionally, employees worked 8-hour workdays and if they worked in offices, they tended to work in their silos. In more recent years, many businesses have begun embracing open, collaborative, and flexible ways of working.

This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone including businesses. The global pandemic has affected business operations and has forced organizations to work from home whether they were prepared for it or not. As organizations to the new normal, we continue to see more and more changes in the workplace.

Yet, through all these changes, employees remain at the core of every business. They are key in achieving the productivity goals of a business as well as in building a positive and collaborative company culture. For businesses to survive and thrive in today’s constantly evolving situation, they must be able to adopt new ways of working and, at the same time, engage employees - and this is where team building comes in.

Here are a few reasons why team building is critical for businesses today.

Builds Trust

For your team to effectively and efficiently work together, your employees need to know they can trust each other, and they have each other’s back if needed. When employees feel safe, they open up. They let the people they work with know about their strengths and weaknesses, even their goals and aspirations at work. They also become more proactive with their ideas, take risks, listen to each other and then arrive at a consensus.

Through team building activities, your employees will learn to trust their colleagues more. They will learn to open up, share ideas, and opinions. This is important because when there is trust in your team, your employees won’t hesitate to express their thoughts and suggestions. This will result in more collaboration, communication, and teamwork.

Encourages Communication

When employees come to know the personalities, desires, strengths, and weaknesses of the people they work with, they learn to foster responsive and meaningful communication. Communication also allows employees to understand their roles and what their peers are doing.

When employees know what their team members are doing, they can check up on the progress made and help each other out if someone is unable to reach their goal. However, encouraging communication amongst employees is not an easy feat, especially since employees are usually fixed at accomplishing their individual tasks, leaving limited space for meaningful communication. It is especially more challenging when everyone is working remotely.

This is where team building activities play an important role. A team building activity is a great chance to encourage communication among employees. By bringing the entire team together for a fun and exciting team building activity, even employees who seldom work together begin to interact with each other and even share a few laughs when doing an activity. Also, through virtual team building activities, employees who are working remotely from home will still feel connected.

Team building activities will help your employees feel more confident collaborating and communicating with one another. When more employees talk to each other, they can better strategize and hold discussions and try to finish the task more efficiently.

Improves Company Culture

When teams learn to work together, creativity and innovation can be seen and felt in the workplace. When employees communicate and collaborate more, their performance and efficiency also improve. They can resolve conflicts and misunderstandings and make people more accepting of each other.

Bottom line, team building activities help in fostering a positive and motivating workplace. Also, with your employees working remotely from home, this provides an opportunity for your team members to bond in a less formal setting while having fun and escaping the boredom or loneliness of working from home. Reinvigorating your team with positivity will help boost morale during tough times.

Virtual Team Building Activities

Apart from the advantages of organizing team building activities, incorporating innovative ways for your team to come together through remote team building activities could just be the much-needed break that your team needs from their regular day-to-day tasks.

Here are a few fun virtual team building ideas that you can check out:

• Online Games - Try Kahoot or online Charades, Pictionary, or other classic games that you can do over a video call!
• Online Team Building Bingo - This is an easy game to play over video conferencing. You can even get online bingo templates to make it easier for you to organize!
• Virtual Team Building Show & Tell - This is an easy game that promotes public speaking and storytelling skills by having each of the team members share something personal about their lives.

If you want a list of more virtual team building ideas, view it here.

Team building activities, whether in-person or through virtual platforms, are instrumental in boosting employee engagement. Whatever type of team building activity you choose, make sure that you know what you want to achieve through the activity. Choose activities that will be beneficial to your team. These should help increase employee engagement and build a motivated organization.

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