Five team building activities to engage your team

An escape room is a fun and interactive experience for teams to actively get involved in. You are presented with multiple tasks and activities to solve, putting your team right under time pressure. As conflicts arise, the team are immediately put in a position to practice conflict resolution, pushing them further to not only communicate effectively, but practice their listening skills, too.  
Players are encouraged to work together, enabling company managers to see how their team follows instruction, identifies a common goal and crafts a plan of action to work towards it. Reports from 2016 show that 79% of participants feel more motivated and productive in a game-based learning environment. Escape Rooms can support more engaged workforce.

This classic group activity is another fun way to get employees working together, communicating and demonstrating their ability to problem-solve. Treasure hunts require thinking power, communication, and most importantly, cooperation. Engaging in team building exercises such as a treasure hunt also encourages friendships between co-workers. Gallup found that engagement improved 50% with colleagues having a close friend at work. In a treasure hunt, teams are given riddles, puzzles and clues to figure out their next move. This requires a lot of collaborative thinking, decision-making and effective communication. According to bit.ai collaboration statistics, companies able to exhibit effective communication are 4.5 times more likely to harbour the best employees.

High Rope courses are team building activities that provides a strong sense of teamwork. Co-workers are tested on how much they trust each other as they assist their colleagues in balancing and climbing onto the course itself. Strong collaboration and communication skills are strongly needed for teams to successfully complete the course. Teams are required to tackle challenges together whilst also motivating and providing support to their team members. Being able to participate and showcase efficient teamwork skills is advantageous for companies as it results in fewer and more efficient meetings, better communication across teams and heightened engagement at work.

This adrenalin-inducing team building activity similarly requires communication skills, a huge amount of collaborative teamwork and strategy as the team is split into groups. Working together in teams creates an allegiance that is transferable to the workplace. Fun team building activities like paintballing are a beneficial way for a company to produce and sustain an engaged workforce

Outdoor sports like rugby or football are great team building exercises that can get your co-workers feeling energised and engaged. In a survey conducted by the Professional Search Centre, 39% of its respondents felt that people in their organisation didn't collaborate enough. Football is a healthy, physical activity that calls for collaboration and encourages healthy competition amongst co-workers, thus boosting engagement and increasing job performance. Physical exercises like these push colleagues to better themselves as there is more of an incentive to reach their target goals. Team building exercises like sport are often a way for co-workers to come together cooperatively to achieve this. Not only does this promote an engaged workforce, but around 33% of employees admit that the ability to collaborate increases both their creativity and loyalty to the company.