Communication and healthy relationships inside the team is the key to making any business thrive and develop in the best way possible. Teams that function as close-knit communities and provide the necessary support to each other show better results and in general, team members inside such clusters feel more satisfied with their jobs.
Team bonding undoubtedly becomes even more important in remote teams and distributed teams, because people feel the lack of human touch in their everyday communication and can not that easily socialize with their colleagues at the coffee machine. Not only that, they find it hard to wait until they get a response from their teammate or communicate issues to each other, being unaware of the problems that might appear on the other side.
This article is going to provide you with some insights into the challenges that remote or hybrid teams may face in their workplace and will give you a detailed overview of team-building activities for work that will help you, as a team leader, improve the morale inside big or small groups.
Building and fostering strong relationships has always been the question of team leaders, especially when it comes to managing group members who come from different cultures and backgrounds.
There are a few challenges that managers face so that their teams could communicate effectively, and here are some of them:
Today, we can see that there are many techniques and approaches that exist to encourage team members to treat each other with care and support. One of the most straightforward ways to cement relationships even in a remote team is to hold team-building events that revolve around communication skills, listening skills, creative thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving competence.
Below, you will discover the perks that team-building exercises could bring to any team, and what fun team-building activities you can use while onboarding new team members or building up team camaraderie inside the already existing team.
If you have decided to work on improving cohesion and encouraging team spirit inside your groups, team-building activities for work are a fun way to reach your goal in the short term. By playing team-building games, you can enhance team cohesion and develop reliance in the entire team.
Here you can find a list of advantages that a team building activity, even if it is a simple team building exercise, which is held regularly can bring to any team, regardless of its size or type:
Team building exercises are aimed at improving communication in the first place. Corporate team-building activities help to create a relaxing atmosphere that prompts employees to share their ideas, knowledge, and opinions. In a team building session, team members are supposed to work together towards finding a solution to a problem, often in a form of a fun game. This way, they learn a lot about each other's communication styles and personalities and can take this knowledge to their workplaces.
It can be quite hard to learn how to work effectively towards a common goal, especially if we are talking about a large group of people while being remote. However, when taking part in a team building game, team members discover the ways they can collaborate with each other, ask for and offer help, as well as share responsibilities. These mock situations can provide a lot of insights into aspects of effective and efficient communication in everyday life.
On top of being just an exciting event where team members take part in classic games with healthy competition, a fun team-building activity can develop problem-solving skills and encourage people to think outside the box. For example, if a team is playing something like an escape room, they need to work together toward finding a creative solution to achieve a common goal. Later, these skills can be used in brainstorming sessions and developing a sales pitch and will assist in coming up with innovative ideas.
When people are focused on achieving common goals and creating ideas to succeed together, this helps to increase their motivation at work and feel more appreciated by other team members. A healthy atmosphere inside the team benefits employee retention and reduced staff turnover as well as increases employee satisfaction and prevents burnout.
As you can see, such activities as teambuilding games for adults only have positive outcomes for building a strong team. Whenever you wish to introduce the best team-building activities to your team, be it a classic game or something more creative, you can visit the Weljo website for team-building ideas to implement in your next team meeting online or in a conference room.
There is a vast number of various activities that take from just a few minutes to hours and can be played either in one or multiple teams. It is only up to you which activity to pick, a more relaxed one, or a particular game that will make teams compete against each other. If you are struggling with ideas, you can always use the Weljo website as a springboard where you can find hints for spontaneous and scheduled breaks during the working day.
Nowadays that many people are working online, and it might be harder to come up with some fun gaming activities simply because many of them were created for offline conditions. However, with the help of special websites like Weljo, you can adapt these games for an online format, so that there would still be opportunities for your teams to improve their communication skills!
Just to give you a quick overview of what you can do to introduce new hires to the team, or strengthen relationships within the existing one, we have prepared a list of activities to foster communication among team members.
The game begins by preparing a list of items that each team needs to find within a certain time limit. The winning team is the one that comes to the finish line first, with all the objects ticked off the list.
This activity benefits greatly to developing communication and problem-solving skills and creates a positive and supportive atmosphere within a playing team. We understand totally that this game was originally designed for offline environments where people can search for items in the office or somewhere in nature, but Weljo had already translated this activity online.
This game should be played in two teams or more, because it is a kind of competition between participating members. The point is to pick the questions that have a certain value and discuss the answer to them to win and gain a higher score than other teams.
This team-building activity promotes communication and helps to extend knowledge in different areas. Some of your team members might get really surprised to find out how much one team member can know about a difficult subject!
The game can easily be held online, in MS Teams, Zoom, or Skype, and you can adapt the offline version to an online one by using special software and tools like Weljo.
This game is really great for improving communication between workers and boosting the creative thinking skills of each participant. The game can be played both in small groups of 2-3 people as well as in larger groups. All the participants need to do is come up with three funny stories, two of which are true about them and one is a lie. Then, the rest of the team needs to guess which one of these stories is a lie.
You can gather the employees together and either let all of them play together or use breakout rooms in MS Teams or Zoom to let them communicate and discuss their answers, and watch how they work together towards bringing their team to win!
This is by far the best game for new teams or team members to learn more about their coworkers, and the rules are quite easy! All you would need to do is discuss hypothetical situations and provide an inside about how you would behave in such circumstances. These what-ifs can be created both by the organizer of the event or by its participants, and they can be as wild as you want them to be!
What I Would Have Done can be a great game that your team can try out at their first team-building activity: not only because it is quite easy, but also because it would help the participants to understand their coworkers better! In addition, this is not really a competitive game, which can be a good thing for your first meetings as it would not divide people into opposing teams or create tension between those teams.
It is clear that most traditional team-building activities like scavenger hunt, board games, or egg drop were designed for offline teams because people are supposed to have physical contact and work with objects in the real world. However, if you want to adjust any of these activities for online teams or find other ideas for holding events for remote teams, you can check out Weljo for suggestions on creative breaks.
Weljo is a service that helps reduce the stress and isolation of remote work by providing ideas for planned and impromptu breaks.
The aim of the service is to show employees who work remotely the ways to distinguish between personal life and work and maintain a good work-life balance. Also, the company believes that social connection can be established and maintained in any team, no matter how big it is, and whether the teammates find themselves in different locations.
If you deal with Weljo, you can choose from a wide variety of team-building activities for adults available on the website, with a focus on the emotional part of team collaboration.
What makes Weljo a great tool for improving team collaboration is the following:
Many companies around the world have already tried working with Weljo, and the statistics show impressive results. For example, a large number of employees claim that the service boosted their productivity and motivation and strengthened the relations inside their teams.
If you are searching for a service that will help your employees feel better at their workplaces, Weljo is definitely a go-to. With a wide range of meditations, games, and other activities none of your workers will ever suffer from burnout or loneliness even if they never see their colleagues in the flesh.
It is true that effective communication in the team is crucial for reaching the company's goals on time and avoiding unexpected issues in the internal processes. There are five constituents of team building that improve relationships inside the team, and they are collaboration (giving support, sharing resources and information), cooperation (the ability and desire to help your teammates), communication (the way people get their messages across), consensus (the ability to make mutual decisions) and commitment (the dedication and effort the employees put in).
Almost any team-building activity can improve retention and reduce staff turnover. However, the most popular options are the ones related to doing community service, planting trees, and helping out those in need. On top of them, managers and HR specialists often introduced shared lunch breaks, nights or days out with colleagues, or even games to give their employees the chance to get to know each other better and value the company more.
Team-building exercises are a fun way to cultivate healthy relationships within a team. If members of one team respect, value, and appreciate each other on a personal level, this will be reflected directly in the way they perform tasks. Many managers think that it is important for a company culture to hold such events regularly since they add to the overall morale and atmosphere inside small and big groups.
If you need to choose the right pick for your team, first you should think of whether your favorite activity will work with the size and location of the team. Sometimes it is not easy to find a good solution for a virtual team, although some offline activities like office trivia can suit. Alternatively, you can use a special service like Weljo to help you out in this matter and inspire your team to collaborate more.
