by Susan Cain, Ed.D., Corporate Learning Institute
This is a year of difficulty for many corporations and organizations. Fun is in short supply. The heady days of the 90’s are long gone. Many organizations are rethinking their strategy and approach to business. The need to sustain human energy, inspiration, and persistence are critical needs. The solution is often overlooked, and appears to be too simple to be true. Reintroducing fun, creativity, and innovation into the workplace is the answer.
Fun team building activities and events can inspire, engage, and reenergize a tired workforce. These fun team-building activities can include a short-term time-out session that asks employees to think differently or redirect their attention and energy to possibilities and creative efforts. These fun team-building events also serve the purpose of aligning workers into a team. These teams benefit from the fun team-building event because of coming together around a common goal. When teams achieve these goals, they actually improve their morale, social functioning, and teamwork impact. Imagine a team of under-motivated workers experiencing a surprising win as they participate in fun team building activities. Often, the individuals and teams can rebuild lost connections to each other and move forward to produce even better results at work.
Team building activities and events can also be adapted to include important business information. This information can be included in an interesting and low-key way. For example, fun team building events can be cleverly disguised as business information or training sessions. Many companies end their fun team building event activity with a business communication session. Finally, fun team building events or activities build community and can reinforce your company’s important communication pipeline. In short, fun team building events and activities may appear to be “just for fun”, but can actually add training or communication value to your company’s offerings of employee engagement activities. Whether you choose a short-term event or longer-term series of activities, your employees will enjoy the unusual and entertaining format that fun team building activities and events provide.