Are you planning to organize a corporate team building event for your hardworking and loyal employees? If yes, that’s fantastic news.
A corporate team building event will have a large number of benefits for your business, such as encouraging collaboration between peers, reducing workplace conflict, improving problem-solving in the office, building employee trust, encouraging engagement between employees and senior managers and much more.
Team bonding events are about giving something back to those who work for your company, but the benefits you see as a result of hosting the event will help your business grow even further.
However, no matter how many members of staff your business employees, corporate team building events can be complex to organize and run. From where to host the event, what activity to choose, time scheduling, selecting which food and drinks will be on offer and a whole range of other logistics to think about, team building events are easy to get wrong.
Unfortunately, a badly designed team building day could have a negative effect on your employees and an unwanted return on investment (ROI).
By simply avoiding some common mistakes when planning your company’s corporate team building event, you can avoid the chance of hosting a bad experience and ensure your organization taps into the range of benefits that come with a well-planned team building event.
To help, Teambonders has created a list of the five most common mistakes that businesses make when planning their corporate team building events, and how to avoid them.
1 - Not setting clear objectives
Your team building event should be fun, but it also need to have clear objectives in regards to ROI and what you want your business to achieve from hosting the event. It’s important to first decide what you want to achieve, whether it be reducing conflict in the office, helping teams bond after a merger or improving collaboration efforts within your company.
By knowing what you want to achieve before you start planning your event, you’ll be able to create a strategy that identifies business goals while looking at how your team building event will help you achieve them.
2 - Being over ambitious
Being over ambitious with your team building event will likely lead to failure, so don’t expect to achieve everything at once. Overworking a team to achieve a goal will tire them out and have the reverse effect, while having too many goals will probably see your business realizing none of them.
By keeping your event simple and choosing an agenda with fewer activities, you’ll be able to give employees the time to enjoy themselves while also focusing on the most important business goals that you want to achieve from the event.
3 - Not giving yourself enough time to plan the event
No matter how efficient and organized you are, planning an event is a huge task and it can’t just be done in a matter of weeks. If you don’t give yourself enough time to plan it, it’s likely the event will end in chaos with both employees and management left unsatisfied with the results.
Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to plan the logistics, market the event to your employees, and leave plenty of wiggle room for resolving any issues that may come up during the planning stage.
4 - Letting your employees form their own cliques
Everyone in the office will have people they get on with more than others, so it’s important not to let your staff members choose their own team. This will only reinforce cliques in the workplace that will further promote segregation.
By breaking up office cliques and giving your employees the opportunity to work with someone new, you’ll enhance communication across your office and empower staff to improve on their teamwork skills.
5 - Not partnering with a world-class event facilitator
Organizing a team building event requires unique skills, knowledge and expertise that you are likely not to possess within your company. That’s why it’s important to select the right team building event planning partner for a seamless and meaningful event.
Ensure that you partner with an event facilitator that works for your brand and helps you to achieve your end goal. They will design a unique program that ensures your event is fun, exciting, and, most importantly, will help your company grow.
With almost two decades of providing high-quality team building activities and events across the US and Canada, the Teambonders team of skilled program architects and facilitators can design the perfect corporate team building event for your organization.
Want to learn more? Contact us today.