Team building: types, goals, benefits and how to successfully organize it

Team building is a human capital management strategy designed to strengthen and optimize employee relationships. 

Organizing team building activities improves the workplace atmosphere, enhances performance, fosters constructive relationships among team members, and promotes talent evaluation. 

Developing a successful team building strategy is closely tied to the productivity and competitiveness of your organization. 

Therefore, let’s explore the different types of team building, their objectives, the benefits they can bring to your project, and how to organize them successfully.

What is Team Building?

Team building is a dynamic approach that employs various activities to reinforce employees’ sense of belonging to a group. 

It also facilitates talent assessment. Thus, team building is focused on achieving the best version of teams while creating collaboration that allows each member to benefit the others while evolving individually. 

It becomes more than just a recreational activity; it becomes an experiential formative activity for personal growth.

The concept of team building originates from the well-known Hawthorne effect, an experiment conducted by Professor Elton Mayo in the 1930s at the Western Electric Hawthorne factory. 

This study highlighted that, for workers, job security, recognition of their work, and a sense of belonging are essential for properly performing their responsibilities.

Team Building activities

Depending on the environment in which the activities take place, you can choose from three different types of team building:

Indoor team building

Indoor team building activities take place in enclosed spaces, preferably outside the workplace to remove individuals from their routine and immerse them in the activity. 

You can organize escape rooms, exercises with a problem-solving focus, or role-playing sessions that enhance leadership. 

Another possibility is themed show cooking, which can be very motivating.

Outdoor team building

Outdoor team building often involves sports-related activities or a sports spirit. 

Football, sailing, hiking, paintball, go-karting, or treasure hunts, depending on your team’s characteristics, are some of the many possibilities. 

Consider organizing social activities such as cleaning up spaces or helping those in need.

Virtual team building 

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can also help create effective virtual team building activities. 

Both virtual meetings that encourage the exchange of opinions and more playful options based on gamification can be good choices for strengthening the bonds of remote teams. 

Virtual coffee breaks or participation in activities related to emotional salary, such as remote yoga classes, are other possibilities.

Team building goals

Team building objectives aim to promote cooperation, communication, and trust within teams, essential elements for achieving an organization’s strategic goals.

Team goals

Team building activities in companies foster employees’ collaborative spirit with a focus on problem-solving. 

Therefore, when performing their tasks in a conducive environment, they have the confidence to evolve as a group and as individuals.

Company goals

This Human Resources strategy improves relationships between departments by promoting the integration of different areas within an organization. 

It also enhances productivity and competitiveness by fostering respectful relationships based on effective communication and empathy, creating a favorable climate for the cross-transmission of ideas.

Benefits of Team Building

One of the benefits of team building activities is team awareness, as you have seen throughout these lines. 

This is achieved through other advantages that help build strong relationships focused on:

• Nurturing healthy competition.
• Optimizing process development.
• Increasing production.
• Stimulating communication.
• Creating common values.
• Fostering cohesion.
• Enhancing skills such as adaptability to change and decision-making.
• Boosting creativity and innovation.
• Increasing individual self-awareness.
• Enhancing exponential leadership.

How to organize successful Team Building?

Organizing a successful team-building event requires considering the following aspects:

Create teams

Teams mustn’t exceed 12 people, with around 7 being ideal for establishing good cooperation among them. 

Teams should also be balanced to ensure a level playing field if the activities include any form of competition. 

In this regard, technology can be a great ally through specialized HR software that objectively assesses your employees’ different profiles, skills, and competencies.

Establish a budget

The budget will determine the types of activities you can implement, helping you choose the most enriching ones that foster creativity. 

Keep in mind that it’s often not about having large budgets but finding enriching activities that encourage creativity.

Select the type of activity

The selection of the activity type depends on the problems to be solved or the skills to be enhanced. 

Analyze your company’s context thoroughly, and consider proposing multiple activities so that people can vote and participate from the outset. 

Consider turning to specialized companies that have trained personnel to understand each project’s needs and propose the best activity for each case.

Communicate activity details

Internal communication within the company is crucial, especially in team building. Building enthusiastic and effective communication about the activities has a direct impact on the level of engagement.

Follow-Up

As with any strategy you implement in your organization, you must check if the objectives have been met and gather employee feedback.

At Smowltech, we want to help you simplify your remote processes with proctoring plans that strengthen trust between your employees and the company. 

Request a free demo where we will customize innovative and effective solutions for your assessments, training, and remote processes.