Ultimately, it should be your aim to reward hard work and figure out ways to create a bonding experience with your team. That’s what gets the best results. A happy team is a productive team. They will be spending a vast majority of their day in the office – so it’s a good idea to make it a place they want to work in.
Let’s have a look at some great ways get your team truly bonding:
1. Open Communication
The key to any worthwhile relationship is communication, and that goes both ways. Unfortunately, more often than not, employees don’t feel like their superiors are really listening to them in the work place.
A recent survey conducted on more than 1,000 US employees by 15Five showed that only 15% of employees are satisfied with the quality of work place communication. Furthermore, the study found that 81% of employees would prefer to join a company that values ‘open communication’ than one that just offers great perks.
The good news is, there are simple measures you can take to catalyse and enhance your team’s communication abilities. For example, taking your team on a team building day could be a great way to trigger communication in a way that may not be possible in the work place.
If you choose the most appropriate team building event, with a focus on solving communication friction, and intent to address and reduce a certain problem within your work-force (communication) then you are much more likely to create a bonding experience with your team. An event like this will give everyone a chance to see one another in a different light and push people to step over the ordinary communication boundaries of the workplace. Sometimes this is exactly what’s needed to create a bonding experience.
We Recommend:
The Killing – our award winning Crime Related Team Building Event, offering a high focus on communication and problem solving.
2. Fun & Reward
If your team is outperforming and everyone is hitting their targets, then it goes a long way to reward them with a fun activity. This doesn’t have to be a huge outlay, or too time consuming – take the team out for the day, get out of the office and just do something fun.
There is literally an endless amount of options for what you could do with your team in any amount of time with the right planning. (For inspiration, have a read of our Top 40 Team Building Events article).
You’ll find some free options, some with a small cost attached, some near, some far – but one element remains the same – rewarding and praising your team’s hard work and achievements helps you to create that essential bonding experience with your team and ignites their inspiration to want to continue outperforming at the work place. As counter intuitive some leaders may find it – getting your team out of the office can lead to an increase in bonding inside and outside of the work place.
We Recommend:
The Ultimate Team Building Event with it’s promise of interactive fun & rewards!
3. Dine Together
It has become common place in the UK for people to take their lunch break alone eating at their desk. Instead, try to discourage this by providing the correct utilities and resources for your staff to go to lunch as a unit and eat together, if they so wish.
Creating a bonding experience with your team doesn’t have to be an almighty expense to your company. Fostering a sense of unity in your team is much simpler than you may think. Sometimes, this type of ‘coming together’ can come from simply allowing your team to eat together at the same table, or even making it a once a week event where everyone contributes to the spread and enjoys the food as a group.
This is another great way to enhance the bonding experience amongst your team members, allowing them a hiatus from working like a steam train – giving them time to unwind, relax and talk about things other than work.
Naturally, this is a much more sociable way to approach lunch and you may even find that the shy members of your team get involved instead of looking at cat pictures on their phone in solitude.
We Recommend:
Crime & Dine – What’s better than solving a murder mystery in between courses at your Corporate Dinner?
4. Interest Outside of the Work Place
Professionality should be at the forefront of everything that occurs in a workplace; but that’s not to say that employers shouldn’t take the time to get to know the person behind the position.
You should strive to treat employees as real people, not just typical worker bees. The key to this is expressing an interest in employees’ lives outside of work from time to time.
What are your colleague’s personal and professional goals? What do they like to do once the workday is over? Where do they hope to be in five years? Do they have a family?
Psychologically, this removes a barrier of unnecessary authority and allows you to connect with your colleagues/staff on a more altruistic level. You may even notice they start to work harder for you in the long run, as you master more and more ways of implementing bonding experiences with your team.
We Recommend:
Around The World – Our Team Building Event jam packed with fun activities, designed to get everybody out of their comfort zones and moving around!
5. Recognise Contributions and Good Work
It’s so easy to underestimate the power of a metaphorical ‘pat on the back’, especially with your top performers who are intrinsically motivated.
Everyone likes recognition and kudos. None more so than those who work hard and give their all to your establishment.
Managers need to communicate with their people and find out what makes them feel good (for some people this may be a promotion, for other people this may be public recognition, and so on..) and then to reward these top performers for a job well done. If you’re doing it right; this will happen very frequently as everyone will be clearly and effectively motivated by incentives.
Thanks for reading our article on the five ways to create a bonding experience with your team.
Start Planning your Perfect Team Building Event:
If you’d like to learn more about how to go about team building, talk to us to discover why you should be taking your team on team building activities. Do not hesitate to visit our website https://www.rightangleevents.co.uk or jump straight in to our blog which is full of tips & tricks to make the most out of your team and work life.
