Team building events have earned a bad rep. The infamous trust fall exercise, team weight loss challenges, and even certain obstacle course events have backfired into eye rolls and blog fodder on what companies should not do when attempting to promote team bonding.
They may have even contributed to the rise in specialized “escape room” businesses designed to solve for the lame team building event conundrum.
Recently the Gate 39 Media team gathered at Flight Club in Chicago — a social bar venue designed for teams to enjoy playing and competing in a variety of fun dartboard games for some bonding and team building (and to share some good food and drink).
While our teams of designers, marketers, and developers overlap and collaborate daily, periodic outings like these produce benefits and help strengthen our agency culture, morale, and productivity in three distinct ways:
Mini Brain Vacations Recharge Creativity
We’re constantly pivoting across financial services design, development, and marketing projects and meeting multiple deadlines, so scheduling an opportunity to take a step back outside the office at a fun local venue helps keep stress levels in check and renews mental stamina for upcoming work sprints.
Taking breaks can help employees avoid burnout. Successful people take breaks and one study we found proves this point. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied four groups of people. Each of the groups worked on a brain-intensive task for 50 minutes. The group that took more breaks had the highest mental stamina at the end of the 50 minutes.
Time for Team Cohesion
Team building works to build better relationships, increase understanding of group goals and improve communications among group members. In a game of darts, the Gate 39 Media team was randomized, and each pair worked together toward a shared goal in the game of darts.
In this exercise, each team was cheered on by the entire group while working and communicating together in a positive way to do their best and reach the objectives of each game of darts. Competition has been shown to help increase productivity and our dart games helped bond the team both in random pairs for each game and as a single group.
Communication Nurturing
With different departments, personality types and work methods, employees can often experience long spans of time without socializing outside of any given project. As a growing agency, it is important that we make time to facilitate a friendly work environment, where people are comfortable and happy to talk to and work with anyone. When an employee is engaged and made to feel included in the organization, productivity will go up.
A RedBalloon/AltusQ report found that companies with high employee engagement levels are up to 10x more likely to see an increase in sales and profit than those with lower engagement.
Successful team building events are an unsung essential ingredient to our company’s growth! By bringing our employees together in fun collaborative ways we serve to recharge our creative cells which contributes to a more cohesive and collaborative culture and work environment.
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