Did you know that team building activities positively impact employee productivity? Planning regular team building events is a great way to improve the overall morale of your employees, keep them engaged, and boost efficient teamwork. In fact, studies show that team building exercises are one of the most effective ways to boost employee productivity.
In a competitive industry, maintaining productivity is crucial. You must ensure that resources and investments bring good returns and help your business deal with market fluctuations. To do this, it’s vital to ensure good employee output without impacting their wellbeing.
Unfortunately, employee performance can dip if there is a lack of communication, leadership issues, or poor company culture. This can cause employees or an entire team to spend more time completing simple tasks. Therefore, addressing these issues makes your business more profitable, encourages growth, remains competitive, and meets consumer demand.
In this article, you will learn how team building events are an excellent way to address these problems.
Team Building and Employee Productivity
Fun team building events provide excellent opportunities for employees to get together in a relaxed, positive environment. This allows employees to engage in casual conversation, discuss ideas, share experiences, and build relationships. These events also allow leaders to connect and foster positive working environments.
Team building also addresses the reasons why team productivity stalls. The six main reasons why team fail to work efficiently are these:
- Lack of recognition
- Poor communication
- Lack of flexibility
- Leadership problems
- Poor company culture
- Employee burnout
When team leaders get team event planning right, they can resolve all the issues connected with workforce productivity.
The result is a healthy work environment where productive employees enjoy their work and collaborate well with other team members.
What is Employee Productivity?
Employee productivity refers to the amount of effort and time required to produce the desired result. Various factors affect productivity in a team. For example, clarity and communication can affect how well team members understand the task and common goal. Additionally, individual employee morale affects their output.
The Importance of Employee Productivity
Team productivity is crucial because it directly impacts your company’s profitability. If workers produce less than what is expected, your business loses money. However, when employees perform at peak levels, they work better and generate more revenue. This makes employees happy, and their productivity increases.
Therefore, improving employee productivity is essential to growing your business. It helps you meet customer demands, increases sales, and maintain competitiveness.
Six Ways Team Building Boosts Productivity
It’s no secret that happier employees are more productive team members. However, if you only emphasize productivity to employees without giving them the support they require, you will see productivity levels drop.
A fun team building event that everyone loves provides a great opportunity to improve employee output. If you can build strong teams through fun events, it will have a knock-on effect on the entire organization.
Let’s look at specific ways that team building addresses the six reasons why workplace productivity fails.
1. Team Building Improves Positive Communication
Effective communication is one of the most important aspects of teamwork. Employees can solve problems faster and make better decisions when they communicate effectively. However, team activities are not just to get employees together to have casual conversations. Instead, they can help workers develop solid communication tools.
For example, many team activities involve members working together to solve various problems. This may be to build a cardboard boat that floats, solve a mock kidnapping event, or meet specific objectives or goals in healthy competition with other teams.
As team members get to know each other better by participating in activities outside the office, their interactions become more natural. It can help employees by improving their workflow and making sharing ideas easy. This fosters honest communication and strengthens a culture of trust.
Team event to develop communication skills: Try the Cross Boundary Communication event. This helps entire teams develop communication and listening skills. It also teaches how to provide constructive, consistent feedback.
2. Team Building Events Show Employee Recognition
Productivity improves when employees feel appreciated for all of their hard work. A simple way to show appreciation is to recognize their efforts. Teambuilding events offer an excellent opportunity to do this. The event could be a simple dinner event or a weekend corporate retreat to thank employees for their hard work.
Studies show that recognizing workers’ contributions is a key driver of employee engagement. Unfortunately, 35 percent of employees in the US feel at odds with their employers. Unfortunately, organizations with disengaged employees experience increased absenteeism, low turnover, poor productivity, and more accidents at work.
Your company doesn’t have to be among these worrying statistics if you organize fun, engaging team building activities.
Recognizing good performance through team-based activities can boost job satisfaction. The event can also be used to recognize individual employees for their contributions or reward entire teams. Employee recognition is an important part of any successful event. In addition, it helps to enforce your company’s values and strong culture.
Team-based activity to show employee recognition: Why not try the Junkyard Orchestra event to get the entire group in a fun, creative, and innovative space? It is designed to recognize unique individual talents.
3. Use Corporate Events to Develop Leadership Skills
Effective leaders must learn efficient management styles to boost productive teamwork. Corporate events are a perfect place to foster leadership skills. In fact, some companies even use team building as a tool to identify potential leaders within their workforce. You can plan events to help reinforce positive management styles and leadership skills.
An effective management style must include clear communication, critical thinking, creativity, and clarity. Learning these skills in a fun, relaxed environment is excellent for developing a leadership strategy. Better leadership boosts team morale and gives teams more confidence. This result? Increased team productivity.
Favorite team building events to develop leadership skills: Various team activities focus on fun games to enhance leadership development and spot leadership potential. For example, Authentic Leadership is a team-based activity to help create leaders, establish trust, and empower employees to work independently.
4. Team Building Processes Build Positive Workplace Culture
One of the benefits of team building on productivity is that it fosters a positive culture in the company. When people work together toward common goals, they build camaraderie and respect for one another. They also gain a sense of belonging, which results in high levels of employee engagement and loyalty.
A positive workplace culture creates a safe environment where employees feel comfortable expressing themselves and asking questions. Employees who feel valued will have higher levels of motivation and engagement. These factors increase productivity due to developing cohesive teams, an engaged workforce, and a strong culture.
Fun team activity to strengthen company culture: Your employees will love the task of designing and building a cardboard plane that flies. The Art of Flight Challenge can be tailored to your company’s culture, goals, and objectives.
5. Better Team Building Improves Employee Wellbeing
When you invest time and money into improving your team, you improve the overall wellbeing of your employees. A happy and healthy workforce improves product quality and customer satisfaction. Additionally, team building fosters a culture of trust, mutual support, and confidence — all crucial factors for good emotional wellbeing.
One of the many team building benefits is that it gives employees skills to perform tasks better. This reduces workplace stress among employees because they perform better than those who are stressed out. Unfortunately, chronic stress can cause negative emotions such as anxiety, depression, anger, and frustration — feelings that affect employee performance.
Team building games to improve employee wellbeing: The Domino Effect Challenge motivates teams to build an intricate machine to complete a simple task. This teaches positive teamwork, trust, time-management skills, and working in high-pressure situations.
Related reading: How teambuilding events can improve mental health at work.
6. Team Building Event Can Boost a Flexible Workplace Culture
Remote team building events can help address problems that a lack of flexibility in the workplace causes. Many studies show that allowing for flexible scheduling, hybrid working, and working from home positively impacts morale. Flexibility in the office gives employees more control and boosts their work-life balance.
Here are some facts proving that remote work culture can benefit your organization and reduce employee turnover:
- Remote workers are happier: One study found that remote and hybrid workers are 22 percent happier than onsite employees. They also stayed in their jobs longer.
- Remote employees are more productive: A remote work culture can boost productivity by up to 77 percent and results in increased job satisfaction.
Remote team building events are perfect for addressing the challenges of improving remote team and in-house team morale. Remote team activities help off-site workers feel part of the organization and more engaged — the same as physical team events benefit in-house employees.
Related reading: How to plant team building events to strengthen organizational culture.
Improving Employee Productivity Through Team Building
Successful organizations use team building activities to help employees bond and develop stronger relationships. These events encourage open communication and close cooperation. They build trust, improve morale, and help employees feel like they belong. The result is that team bonding activities positively impact productivity.
Call Full Tilt Team Development to Organize Team Building Activities
The best way to organize effective team building activities is through professional event planners. At Full Tilt Team Development, we have years of experience organizing successful team building events. We understand how important these events are to your business and know what works when it comes to motivating your employees.
Our experienced team will plan a custom event that fits your needs and budget. Contact us today at 310-400-6285 or online for a free consultation to discuss your organization’s unique objectives and goals.