Why You Need Virtual Team Building
With more and more companies using remote workers or those working from home a few days a week, the question of how to maintain a friendly, personable, and interactive office environment is more important now than it ever has been before. Team bonding and cohesion were something that many workplaces took for granted, but how can this be accomplished effectively when everyone isn’t always in the office together?
The answer is virtual team building events, fun and exciting ways for your remote teams to get to know each other, make connections, and interact in a different environment. These exercises help your team come together more closely and learn each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, increasing appreciation for what makes us each unique. At the end of it all, this leads to a more friendly and unified workplace with workers who can work together and help each other achieve goals more effectively.
Team Building Helps Reduce Isolation
To perform their best at work, people need interactions with their peers. Remote work has a way of separating people and putting them in boxes, creating both literal and metaphorical walls around each worker. The manager or team leader’s job is to break down these walls and facilitate a way to bring the atomized worker into a peer group.
In the pre-pandemic office days, this was often easier. People naturally bond when they are together in a closed space like an office, with interpersonal relationships and inside jokes flourishing naturally. However, now that many teams work remotely you’ll have to make an intentional effort to create this type of unity within your team.
Team Building Drives Innovation
“The sum is greater than the parts.” What does this old expression mean? Well, those who were used to working in an office with a variety of different personalities, perspectives, and worker types are quite familiar with the meaning. When you bring people together, innovation increases.
Nothing helps a brainstorming session or get ideas flowing like bringing workers together under one roof, and this type of cohesion is necessary to achieve innovation in the modern day. Virtual team building events are the best way to bring your team together, leading them to produce results that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Team Building Increases Productivity
If team building had no effect on productivity, then it is unlikely it would survive as a concept. However, the longevity and lasting power of the team building concept prove that there is something to this idea, and that building a more cohesive team does have a major positive impact on productivity.
If you think about it, it’s hard to imagine a team accomplishing a task without unity. From baseball games to skyscrapers, productivity and success depends on the ability of a team to work well together. When you engage in team building activities, your team will function more smoothly, which will cause overall productivity to rise.
You’ll Have A More Positive Work Culture
The old-fashioned manager might protest, “Well, team building is just a waste of time and money, with no return on investment!” In reality, they couldn’t be more wrong. Team building activities are the #1 way to build a more positive work culture, which has many benefits.
Positive work cultures generate higher sales, leads, and profits. They also increase employee retention, and with the ongoing worker shortage now is not the time to be losing employees or desperately trying to hire. Virtual team building activities and a more positive work culture mean that more people will want to work, stay working, and provide positive reviews of your workplace and staff.
Team Building Provides A Shared Medium For Communication
Not every worker feels comfortable disclosing their true feelings in a formal setting. Meetings with the boss can be intimidating, and group video calls are not always the best venue for venting or letting some frustrations or feelings out.
However, having this type of outlet is invaluable for both employee and employer. Every good boss knows that it’s critical to listen to their employees’ frustrations, attempt to figure out if they are warranted, and determine what can be done to resolve the issue. Not having a shared, friendly, and low-pressure space like a team building event, even just an informal “virtual water cooler chat”, can lead to people’s issues and frustrations building up over time and coming out in a more destructive manner.
There are so many more benefits to virtual team building events that they simply can’t all be listed here! Working remotely is new to many people, and it’s important to take steps to mitigate any adverse effects that virtual or remote work can have. Contact a virtual team building company today and begin the process of taking your workforce to the next level.
