Taking a Useful Break from Work: 5 Great Small Business Team Building Activities

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
~ Andrew Carnegie

Every business wants to be successful; however, when the employees do not work as a team, success can be hard to accomplish. Failing to work as a team will cause productivity to fall, and low productivity usually leads to lower customer satisfaction and fewer profits. If you do not feel that your employees are working together as a team, you should try to motivate, connect and inspire them by incorporating team building exercises into your employees’ tasks.

Scavenger Hunt

The scavenger hunt is a great team building activity that improves problem-solving skills. In order to complete this activity, employees will have to be divided into different groups. For best results, the groups should be small; having two to three people per group is ideal. Once the groups have been formed, instruct the group members to take pictures of different physical items. The pictures can also consist of different ideas. The pictures should be anything that the group members consider to be related to your business. After the group members have taken the photos, they should present the photos to the other groups and explain how the pictures are related to their job and your business. Once all groups have presented their pictures, the groups should be encouraged to discuss how all the pictures can relate to business’s mission. In addition to boosting team work, this activity also gives your employees an opportunity to share their ideas, and it often results in great new ideas on how you can improve different aspects of your business.

Peek and Share

The peek and share team building activity is a great activity for improving teamwork, communication, mutual trust and creativity. In order to complete this activity, employees should be divided into groups with no more than five people per group. The facilitator will also play a vital part in this activity. The facilitator will has a sculpture made from blocks or a picture of a sculpture made of blocks, and each group will have to replicate this sculpture. However, only one person from the group can view the sculpture, and this person has to explain how the sculpture looks to his or her group. To make the activity more challenging, the facilitator should only allow the observer to observe the sculpture for no more than twenty seconds. Each person in the group should have a go at playing the role of the observer; in that way, each group member gets a chance to contribute to his or her group’s success.

Volunteer and Help

The volunteer and help team building activity is used to facilitate cooperation between group members and it is also a great way to give back to your community. For best results of this activity, the employees should be allowed to choose their own groups; however, there should be no more than five people per group. The groups should choose some type of nonprofit organisation they would like to volunteer for and help in some way. Since the groups will be meeting away from the job site, it is important for them to all agree to volunteer with the same nonprofit organization. At the end of the activity the members of each team can share the results of their work and the knowledge they gained while volunteering with other teams. This activity can take only a couple of hours, or you can make this part of your business policy - activities like this not only help the community, but they also help spread the word about your business and help you build a great reputation for your company.

Tangled and twisted

The tangled and twisted team building activity is an activity that will allow group members to improve problem solving skills, increase their teamwork routines, and facilitate cooperation. For this activity, the employees do not have to be divided into groups; however, every employee will have a chance to participate. To complete this team building activity, the facilitator will need to line up every employee, tell them to hold hands, and then move them all around until they are tangled and twisted. The facilitator must remember to tell the employees to not let go of each other’s hands as he tangles and twists them. Once the employees are tangled and twisted, they should help one another to get untangled; however, they still cannot let go of each other’s hands. To make this activity more challenging, the facilitator can choose to blindfold the employees. Even though this activity might sound silly and pointless when you first consider it, it is actually quite fun and it causes a lot of laughter, which is the best way to connect people, and it also teaches your employees to rely on each other when they have a problem that needs to be solved.

Build a “Car”

This team building activity is a great exercise that will give your employees a chance to improve their creativity and connect through working together on a fun project. Since this activity can sometimes take a lengthy amount of time, it would be best if this activity was expanded to last for several weeks. The idea of this activity is simple. Employees should be divided into teams, and each team will build its own car. In order to build the car, the business should supply the teams with materials that they can use to build the car. The teams can build the car from boxes, tape, and other supplies. To increase the teams’ creative mindsets, explain to the team that the cars will race against one another, and the winning team will be rewarded with a prize. Prizes can be also be given for the most creative car, or some other category.

Team building activities are becoming increasingly important in small businesses environments, helping small business owners facilitate teamwork and motivate and inspire their employees. Have you used team building exercises at your office? What do you think about them? Share your opinions, ideas and tips in the comments below.

Dunya Carter is a Brisbane-based marketing and HR specialist and part-time writer. You can find her at Corporate Challenge, where she writes about corporate and small business team building.

photo credit: Colors Time

Bio
Latest Posts

Guest Post

Guest Writer at The Small Business Playbook

If you would like to consider writing a guest post for The Small Business Playbook, we would love for you to provide your expertise for our small business community! You can find out about guest posting by Clicking Here