When it comes to retaining your best workers and attracting even more great employees, there’s nothing better than showing them great teamwork. A recent report by Gallup and CliftonStrengths found that employee engagement increases when their strengths are recognised and they know how great their coworkers are as well. High worker engagement led to41% lower absenteeism and almost 25% lower turnover, the study also found.
Apart from improving your managers’ teamwork skills, recognising employee accomplishments, and other internal methods, it’s also important to build synergy outside of the office. Scheduling team building activities are a great way to do this. In fact, a recent review published in the Public Library of Science found that team building improves the teamwork and performance of workers in different industries. However, your workers may be tired of the same event or venue every year. Here are ways to improve your next event.
Choose the Best Date
Even if your tentative date is close to the holidays, it still may not be the best one. Your sales team may be closing their cycle at this time. Some workers may also be wrapping up a big project. You don’t want to get in the way of their focus during this time. Instead of setting a date yourself, send out a company-wide online survey with about three to five team building date choices. Ask them for date and private event space suggestions as well. This way, your next event gets great attendance.
Make it Meaningful
While activities like team games and mixer events are a great way for employees to get to know each other, having the same event every year can get stale. Add some variety to your event by having employees do volunteer work. Search for charities in Singapore and call them to ask if they need help with their operations. You could also survey your workers about causes they’d like to help out.
Volunteering has a lot of benefits. For one, it improves the company’s reputation as it’s contributing to meaningful causes. Another advantage would be to your workers’ mental and physical health. A recent study from the UnitedHealth Group found that 76% of its respondents felt physically healthier after doing volunteer work. Over 78% of them also said that volunteering lowers their stress levels.
Create Unlikely Teams
Whether you’re doing volunteer work or playing games, it’s always better to achieve things as a team. However, you shouldn’t just group people who are already good friends. Give each group a healthy mix of people from different departments. They gain more acquaintances in the office and improve their communication and teamwork with people they’re unfamiliar with.
It’s no surprise that some of your employees aren’t looking forward to team building, especially if you recycled last year’s event. Spruce up your team building activities up by having it on their ideal date, proposing volunteer work, and grouping them up with people from different departments.
Creating a fun and meaningful event takes a lot of time and effort to do. But it’s worth the effort once your employees come back to the office engaged and ready to work with their team.