Team building: What it is and how to engage candidates and employees
Recruiting tips |

Team building: What it is and how to engage candidates and employees

After the pandemic and with the massive spread of hybrid work, doing team building is even more crucial than in the past. See in this article best practices and some ideas.

Kick off, show cooking, sports activities, yoga classes, volunteering-these are just a few examples of corporate team building, that is, all those activities that are done to strengthen team spirit and intensify bonds. Sometimes among those who have never had the opportunity to meet before.

In fact, it may sound strange, but with Covid, the spread of smart working and the way online onboarding is done, there are now teams where people have never seen each other live, something that rarely happened before or was even unthinkable. This is why doing team building is even more important than in the past.

Let’s look at how best to do it, what are some aspects that should not be overlooked, and some practical ideas for engaging employees as well as candidates.

Summary

What is meant by corporate team building today

Team building refers to activities that are done to create stronger connections within the company and within the same team. Often, it is not enough to work together on a project to create connections: in fact, it can happen that in a company, particularly a medium- or large-sized one, there are people who have never interacted with each other.

Team building can therefore take place spontaneously-you share the same goal-or through structured activities and guided exercises planned by team members or HR people. In some cases, if the budget allows, outside consultants are asked to facilitate these activities. When this is the case, scouting is done first to analyze the company climate, the people who are there, how the population is distributed so as to figure out what ideas to put in place and always do so within the company culture.

As we shall see, there are various ways of doing team building that must undoubtedly be dropped into the context in which people live and adapted to their needs

Why it is important to do team building ?

Team building in companies today is even more valuable than it was a few years ago, especially in light of the fact that more and more forms of hybrid work are being experimented with.
Involving people who are smart working and people who are in the office is not easy because there is a lack of those social occasions-such as meeting at the coffee machine or on a lunch break-that help cement relationships. In addition, it may happen that there are remote workers working in other cities or even other countries and not necessarily of Italian origin. In this case, team building is also necessary from a multicultural perspective and to find commonalities between different cultures.

The latter aspect, then, leads toward another mode of team building that has become increasingly popular in recent times, namely online: when it is not possible to organize in-person activities we make use of remote tools and platforms.

On the other hand, encouraging teamwork in today’s competitive environment-which is experienced more and more painfully-is essential to make people understand that they are not working against each other to “go over each other’s heads,” but with the idea that they are all part of the same company and working toward a common goal.

Also because all this hinders not only the growth of employees on an individual level, but of the entire organization.

Targeting similar activities helps not only in terms of employee retention, but also attraction and talent acquisition: younger people-and not only them-are very interested in companies that focus on people and demonstrate that they do so in a concrete way.

Team building and employer branding

Team building therefore also becomes very important in an employer branding strategy that relies on content marketing and social media marketing activities to tell the story of what the company does and make it a place where it is enjoyable to work. Thinking about a strategy on LinkedIn and the company blog to tell about the various activities organized and the impact they have on people and culture can be a great way to amplify what team building can deliver.

The goals of team building

But what are the reasons for team building? And the possible goals to be achieved? Team building is done to:

  • strengthen relationships between people;
  • foster information and cultural exchange;
  • increase problem solving;
  • define and achieve business goals;
  • identify different roles and responsibilities;
  • promote socialization and networking;
  • develop effective internal communication;

How to do team building: what to know before you start

But how best to do team building? There are some best practices to follow. Let’s look at them in detail.

Define the roles of those organizing the activity

The first suggestion might seem trivial, yet in organizing any team-building activity, whether online or in-person, it is essential to define all the roles. Who’s in charge of contacting the facility, who’s in charge of organization, who’s in charge of communication, who’s in charge of reaching out to external people, and who’s monitoring the progress of the activities, even after everything is over.

Planning the event

Another key word is planning. It sounds like something obvious, but a team-building event is no less demanding than an event dedicated to clients and prospects. That’s why, even if in this case the client is “internal,” you have to plan everything at every stage.

If the team building activities are in a physical location, in addition to choosing it well, figuring out whether it is reachable, what it has nearby, etc., it is equally important to understand whether everyone could participate. If, for example, you have planned a sports activity but there are people who due to disabilities or other reasons cannot participate, it may be time to reschedule.

Choose the platform well (if it is online)

If the team-building activities are online, equally important is to test the platform you’ll want to use. Testing it, seeing what kind of user experience it offers, figuring out if it has a pleasant interface, etc., are all important aspects that should not be overlooked.

Monitor progress

Just as important is monitoring progress. What this means. That if you have planned to do team building activities to achieve very specific goals, such as increasing problem solving or improving interpersonal relationships, it is important to understand “how much is left” after the activity. Often the enthusiasm of the moment can be lost once you return to the office, which is why you need to figure out how to continue with the process you started.

Some team building ideas

That said, what team building activities can be implemented? Besides the classic yoga sessions or show cooking, here are a few.

Volunteer activities

Proposing people to contribute to a project that can improve a small piece of the world is always engaging. If it is also something that can be done all together, it can prove to be a winning idea.

For example, one can think of some events to be organized in the neighborhood where the company is based, as well as of devising and implementing a theater event to which residents will be invited. Or again, among volunteer activities, planting trees, cleaning up the neighborhood, and more can work.

Escape room

It is very fashionable among both friends and colleagues and allows you to train various skills. We are talking about the escape room, that is, that team game by which you are invited to find a way out of an enclosed place, “escape,” in fact. It works because it trains creativity and problem solving, introduces people’s skills, builds trust and, why not, even a shared memory.

Morning coffee

An interesting remote activity is morning coffee. That is, meetings on a regular basis, weekly or twice a month, in which the various teams are given a chance to get to know each other as they would in front of the coffee machine.

You can come up with a topic to discuss for up to 20 minutes, and where in turn everyone has their say. Ideally, this is done with small teams of up to 5-6 people at a time. This is an inexpensive team building activity that is easy to organize and helps people bond. To manage it best, you can create a support Slack group in which different people propose the topic to be addressed.

All of the activities we just mentioned obviously help employee engagement, but they also work in terms of talent attraction. That is why these are valuable and important ways for a recruiter to manage people, both those who are already in the company and those who might come in.

Therefore, even if you don’t have to deal with them directly, get informed to understand how teams are managed, what actions are planned to improve relationships as well as try to understand what is going wrong instead. And don’t forget to monitor progress!