Organiser's Guide - Teambuilding

Venue Review of Organiser's Guide - Teambuilding

Carefully chosen activities can bring real benefits to your business.

Back in the macho days of the 1980s, the mere mention of the word ‘teambuilding’ would send a shiver down most people’s spines. A group yomp through the Brecon Beacons in February, perhaps with a spot of raft-building in sub-zero temperatures, might well be the activity chosen by an embittered personnel director. Things have moved on, thankfully. ‘Inclusive’ is today’s buzzword, not ‘outward-bound’. If your teambuilding exercise doesn’t have elements that can be enjoyed by all your team members, it doesn’t deserve the name.

Enjoyable isn’t shorthand for ‘jolly’, though. The economic difficulties of the past few years have focused minds and budgets, and companies are looking for a practical return on their investment. The best teambuilding outfits examine the needs of each client, and create tailored experiences to fulfil them.

Before getting on the phone to a specialist, do some groundwork. First, pin down your budget and decide how much time you can afford to allocate (factoring in travel to and from a location). Second, think about what you hope to achieve. For instance, do you want to organise a rapport-building exercise and enhance cooperation in the office, or to develop specific skills that can be taken back into the workplace? And give plenty of notice: a quality teambuilding session requires a good amount of thought and planning. It’s not like ordering a new printer. A month’s notice is the absolute minimum.

Bear in mind that the chances of finding an activity that everyone in your team loves are slim. One staff member’s heaven is another’s hell. That’s why it makes sense to opt for an experience that combines several activities to bring out different skills and abilities. Think about the age of your team and the sex ratio – an activity that’s right for a dozen active thirtysomething men won’t be right for a mixed group with a wide spread of ages. The aim is to build confidence, not alienate (or worse humiliate) the participants. This is key, as poorly chosen teambuilding experiences will do more harm than good.

Staff will always be keen to do an activity that gets them a qualification they can use outside the office, as well as inside. If your team entertains a lot, a WSET-endorsed wine course might make sense. Many companies nowadays choose to combine teambuilding with corporate social responsibility, and have long-term community and charity projects. Definitely an avenue worth exploring.

If the aim is to focus on improving office relationships, pinpoint any underlying issues. More often than not, problems are arising through poor communication (often a fault with senior managers, unfortunately). There will always be some internal politics bubbling away, too, and addressing fractious professional relationships is usually best done outside the workplace. You’ll need to make sure that whoever’s providing your teambuilding activity is fully aware of the issues you want to address, and any internal clashes, in the early planning stages.