Team building games are almost as much a part of the workplace as a watercooler. Just about every company does them.
Are they worth it? Should you be using them?
I’m asking about the games of course. Water coolers are good for everyone. We’ve been wondering about team building games at Betterteam, so we surveyed 3,000 HR professionals to find out what they thought of team building games. Regarding our biggest question, do they actually work, we got a pretty strongly positive answer, as you’ll see below.
With just 15% saying no and 65% saying yes, it seems safe to say that you should at least give team building games a chance. But are they right for your company? Our survey also asked what types of companies benefit most from team building games.
Corporations did best in our survey, but really, the numbers were spread out, with no strong winner. Once again, I’d lean toward giving team building games a try, whatever type of company you are.
What’s the worst that could happen? We actually wondered about that too, and asked how many thought that team building activities could backfire and actually hurt a team.
That 35% is no number to laugh at. That means it’s possible to go through all the trouble of putting together a team building game, only to get the opposite results you were looking for.
From talking to HR professionals, we gathered that the best way to avoid this is hiring a professional facilitator or coach who can create a custom team building game for your company. If you’re going to go through the trouble, it may be best to pay a little and be sure that it comes out right.
But they also gave us some solid advice for those that want to do a DIY team building game. First off, they said to be sure to have a clear goal when doing a team building exercise, to put some thought into which exercise would be right for your team, not to micromanage the exercise, and be sure to do a debriefing after it’s over.
Ready to do some team building at your company? Betterteam has illustrated 37 team building exercises. Here are two of our favorites.
We like that one because it’s an interesting challenge, and it can be done anywhere. The next one will require a little more space and equipment, but can also be fun and interesting.
We hope that helps you make some decisions on team building games, and put together something great to help your people perform their best.
