Why Team Building is Important in the Workplace

Is there a feeling of low morale around your workplace at the moment? This could be being caused as a result of employees and management teams struggling to work well together. If this is the case, organising a team-building activity outside of the office could make for a great solution, resulting in productive, efficient, motivated and all-round happy staff members throughout your business.

There are three main reasons why you shouldn’t leave team building out of your business plan…

1. It’s great for increasing engagement

There’s an 87 per cent less chance of employees leaving a company if they have a high engagement level within their current workplace, when compared to those who have a low engagement level. That’s according to research reported on by Officevibe when they were looking into statistics related to disengaged employees.

Conference centre and hotel venue Wyboston Lakes’ managing director, Mark Jones, also pointed out: “Any organisation will benefit from an engaged workforce; employees that are committed, passionate and inspired by their performance will of course generate superior customer service and increased profitability.”

By organising a team-building day, colleagues will be able to bond with each other as they work together — boosting their engagement with one another as a result. Friendships could also develop during these events too, with research by Gallup claiming that having a close friend at work can increase engagement by 50 per cent.

Pic link

2. It’s great for encouraging team work

In a study carried out by the University of Phoenix, close to three quarters (70 per cent) of respondents pointed out that they felt that they were a part of a dysfunctional team. Meanwhile, research by Gallup suggests that poorly managed work groups are on average 50 per cent less productive and 44 per cent less profitable.

It’s therefore vital the employers get teams working together as much as possible. Team-building events will do this, as they teach participants about how working together will improve the efficiency of all members involved – for example, how one team member can help another one’s weakness.

3. It’s great for improving communication

According to a survey that was reported on by ClearCompany, both employees and executives cited 86 per cent of all failures in the workplace to be linked to a lack of collaboration or ineffective communication. A study by HerdWisdom also detailed that 33 per cent of employees believe a lack of open and honest communication will have the most negative impact on employee morale.

Fortunately, team-building days encourages effective communication due to those involved being required to discuss their options in order to find a solution to a problem that they’ve come across. Communicating in these scenarios could lead to barriers been broken — employees being shy to talk to each other for instance — which then carries through when staff members are back in the workplace.