Team building events provide excellent opportunities to help employees improve their skills or learn new skills. Employee upskilling is a crucial part of an organization’s development. And organizing regular team building activities lets you see the strengths and weaknesses of individual employees and entire teams. This results in filling skills gaps, making teams more agile, and staying competitive in a competitive environment.
Employee upskilling — like a team building strategy — is not just another company expense. Instead, it is a wise investment in the growth of your company. Employees with the necessary job skills become more efficient, effective, productive, and engaged. Therefore, reskilling your teams empowers them to reach their full potential.
Why is employee upskilling crucial to your organization’s success? What role does team building play in strengthening existing employee skills and teaching new ones? This article answers these questions and more.
However, there is a vital question to answer. Why does employee upskilling matter to your company? Please read on to find the reasons.
What is Employee Upskilling?
Upskilling is the process of improving current skill levels among employees. Enhancing skills can be done by providing training, mentoring, coaching, or team-based activities. Employee upskilling ensures that all employees can perform at their best level. Additionally, employee upskilling can help develop soft skills like communication and time management.
The Link Between Team Building Programs and Upskilling
Investing in team building exercises can help develop skills your employees require to be productive and engaged. The benefit of team building is that employees learn hard skills and soft skills in a relaxed, fun, enjoyable atmosphere. In addition, team bonding ensures excellent camaraderie among individual members, boosting team spirit.
Some of the skills team building programs help to teach include the following:
- Effective communication and active listening
- Effective leadership and delegation
- Critical thinking
- Time management and working under pressure
- Problem-solving
- Collaboration and productive teamwork
Why Does Employee Upskilling Matter?
Investing in continuous employee training has several benefits for large and small organizations. For example, employee upskilling keeps your workforce in line with industry trends, more productive, and happier. This also affects how individual employees deal with customers. Therefore, upskilling has a direct impact on increased customer satisfaction.
A report into workplace culture and learning opportunities found that employees expect company leaders to invest in upskilling activities. For example, 95 percent of employees aged 26 to 40 expect their company to provide training to update skills and knowledge.
What are the most important skills to learn through team-based training? The report listed three skills that team building events can address. These are:
- Time-management skills
- Leadership skills
- People management skills
-
Seven Ways Team Building Activities Benefits Employee Upskilling
Organizing regular team building games may not sound like a way to upskill employees. However, when executed properly, these team events can teach vital soft skills to benefit the entire team and encourage greater employee engagement. This results in a cohesive team with better job satisfaction, productivity, and lower employee turnover.
Let’s look at seven ways team building can benefit employee upskilling in your organization.
1. Upskilling team members reduces turnover
Providing training and team-based event to teach new skills and strengthen existing ones help reduce staff turnover. New learning opportunities through team building also build loyalty because employees see a clear path in their career progression. Additionally, a company culture based on employee development helps attract new talent.
Organizing regular team building can help retain current employees and attract the best talent. And this could save your company time and money. For example, a report found that businesses in the US experience a cost of $1 trillion in voluntary turnover. Depending on the role, it can cost around $3,500.
Investing in corporate responsibility is one type of team building activity to boost employee retention. For example, organizing charity events helps employees feel they are in a company that values its community. They also bind company employees and managers to a common cause.
Team building activity to reduce employee turnover: End Hunger Games.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Boost employee morale
- Build camaraderie
- Make a sizeable donation to charity
- Strengthen teamwork, collaboration, and communication with coworkers
2. Employee upskilling programs boost productivity
Team building events are excellent for boosting productivity because they introduce fresh ideas and get participants to think outside the box. For example, training new skills can increase productivity by as much as 30 percent. This results in a reduction in mistakes while increasing their overall efficiency.
Employee upskilling helps teach new skills and increases knowledge of new technology. This encourages employees to feel more confident, resulting in greater effectiveness and efficiency. Therefore, employees can learn new skills quickly, keep pace with industry trends, and remain competitive.
Fun team building activity to boost productivity and teamwork: Cardboard boat build.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Develop communication skills
- Time management skills
- Learning how to work effectively under pressure
- Working together as a team
3. Upskilled employees are more engaged
Team building activities to teach new skills to boost employee morale and keep them engaged. Upskilling provides opportunities for professional growth and development and to reach career goals. This helps employees to feel valued in their roles. As a result, engaged employees perform better, are happier, and are more productive.
How valuable is employee engagement to your organization? A study by Gallup showed that highly engaged people performed better. However, 34 percent of staff are disengaged from their company. This leads to poor performance and disloyalty.
Team building exercise for boosting employee engagement: Junkyard Orchestra.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Recognize and reward individual talents
- Teamwork and collaboration
- Learning the importance of synergy
4. Upskilling events help boost job satisfaction
Team-based events for teaching soft skills are perfect for helping employees to enjoy their work better. It is obvious that happy employees work better and are less likely to look for a new job. And combining team building with skills training creates a strong workplace culture that benefits employees and leaders.
A report by the World Economic Forum found that teaching soft skills like leadership and resilience is a crucial part of employee upskilling. And learning new skills is key to job satisfaction. However, employees with skills gaps feel undervalued and unhappy.
Team building event to boost job satisfaction: Mandala Leadership Challenge.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Develop strong leadership skills for everyone
- Identify employees with leadership potential
- Foster strong bonds between team members
- Learning to think outside the box
5. A skilled workforce results in increased customer satisfaction
Investing in team building for employee upskilling results in happier customers and clients. Employees who feel good about their jobs and believe in the company goals tend to perform better at their tasks. And this has a direct impact on your customers, increasing their satisfaction with your product or service.
There are added benefits to having happier customers. They are typically willing to spend more for the services you provide. This is because you build trust and are an authority in the industry. Additionally, they will likely become strong brand advocates for your company.
Team building event to boost client satisfaction: CAP Feedback.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Develop a culture of continual improvement
- Learn how to capitalize on strengths
- Highlight areas for future development
- Accelerate growth by embracing employee feedback
6. Minimize costs when onboarding and hiring employees
Because employee upskilling and team building reduce staff turnover, so you can save money by not hiring new talent. This gives your organization more investment capital to strengthen company culture, identify new areas for growth, and increase revenue. This can give your company a competitive advantage in the industry.
Full Tilt Team Development organizes several soft skill programs to help train employees in the skills that matter in the workplace. Some of these include:
- Eight Productive Practices: This program boosts the company’s bottom line by teaching new and productive habits.
- The Art of Presenting: Train your staff to be confident when speaking publically and interacting with others.
- 360-Degree Behavioral Matrix: Help develop awareness among team members of individual talents, skills, and abilities.
7. Team building events strengthen company culture
Team building and employee upskilling foster a positive corporate environment where employees feel comfortable learning new skills. This culture of continual learning encourages innovation, closes skill gaps, and allows your company to achieve its long-term goals faster. In addition, it creates a positive work environment where employees thrive and support each other.
Team building allows employees to form strong connections with leaders. In addition, skills learning in team-based activities allow everyone to deal with stress, get emotional support, and develop professionally and personally. According to Forbes, planning team building activities is the best way to achieve this.
Team building activity to strengthen company culture: The Art of Flight Challenge.
Benefits for employee upskilling:
- Fun activities can be tailored to your company’s culture, objectives, and goals
- Strengthen teamwork and collaboration
- Learn vital time-management, leadership, and problem-solving skills
- Learn to think outside the box
Call Full Tilt to Organize Team Building and Employee Upskilling
Team building activities have a crucial role in employee upskilling. Participating in fun activities helps the entire team to learn soft skills vital for a successful workforce. In addition, team building encourages engagement and loyalty and increases job satisfaction. This has a direct, positive impact on your bottom line and customer satisfaction.
Full Tilt offers a wide range of team building activities with many years of experience developing, planning, and hosting events for organizations large and small. A member of our team is ready to discuss your objectives and develop a strategy for team building.
Contact us today at 310-400-6285 or fill out this easy online form for more information about our services.