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Businesses can’t function without their teams, and that’s why you should always be working to make your team stronger. If you’re here, you probably already know that and are looking for team-building activities that will keep your group going strong.
Setting up the perfect corporate event can be challenging, especially if you want it to be effective for a diverse group of people. Let’s discuss the benefits of team building for corporate events and how to plan the perfect team bonding activities for your business. Then we have some suggestions for the perfect corporate event ideas for you to try.
Banner for Holiday FY23 Events Campaign
The Best Reasons for Team Building
Team-building events are beneficial for a whole gambit of reasons! Here are the top 11 reasons why you should focus on team building within your company:
- Employees get to know each other better while networking. Spending time in a place where you know the people you’re around is always more comfortable. Employees will be more comfortable and easygoing while also making critical work connections.
- Friendly competition boosts fun and engagement. Teams can learn to work well together when they’re having fun and engaged in an activity.
- Working together fosters innovation and creativity. People tend to be more imaginative when comfortable in their environment. Team building helps your employees get to that point in a fun way!
- Team building exercises enhance company culture. Your company’s culture is formed by your organization’s norms, values, goals, and attitudes. This concept is fundamental to job seekers, and it is established partly through team-building events that bring your employees and management closer together.
- You can show your employees your appreciation for them. Of course, employees want to feel appreciated for their hard work. Giving them a fun activity that improves their work situation helps them feel welcome and valued.
- Discover employees with leadership potential. When people come together to accomplish a task, leaders are born. You begin to see people’s strengths and weaknesses, which is useful when making decisions about employees’ career advancements.
- Teamwork boosts the team’s performance overall. The team better understands each other’s strengths and weaknesses to work together more effectively.
- It’s never a bad idea to work on communication! They always say communication is key, and it’s true! That’s why group activities exist to boost communication between employees.
- Fun activities give employees something to anticipate. Working day in and day out can get tiring. Employees will always look forward to a fun break in their schedule. That’s where team-building events come in! They’ll give employees the break they need to refresh and continue anew!
- Employees can make connections across departments. If departments don’t interact very much, it can be isolating. However, a business has to work cohesively to be functional. Bring departments together with team-building activities.
- Overall, employee morale and engagement increase. It is always great to see employees happy to come to work. When they’re happy with their environment, they’re better at their jobs, and the atmosphere is positive. Corporate events help boost morale to create this positive atmosphere.
- Employees feel more motivated. Employees feel more motivated to work harder when they’re happier, appreciated, and comfortable in their environment. Team building activities make all of this possible, so you get the most out of your team.
How to Plan a Team Building Event
Now that you know how vital corporate team-building activities are, you probably want to plan one immediately!
No matter how often you’ve organized a team-building event for your group, you know that it tends to be stressful and frustrating to plan everything out the way you want. After all, you’re trying to plan an exciting activity by yourself, hoping that it will run smoothly and everyone will have fun– all while trying to complete your daily responsibilities.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, that’s perfectly understandable! That’s why we’ve compiled a list of things you can do to make planning fun group activities much more manageable! Keep reading to learn these nine steps that simplify the planning process!
Step 1: Create a Timeline
The rule for planning the event is the same rule that applies to most things in life: preparation is essential! If you give yourself more time to prepare, it will be easier to plan.
It will likely take about four to six weeks to plan an activity for less than 100 people. For larger events, try to allow a minimum of four to six months of preparation.
Now that you have a rough timeline to plan your event, a good next step is to create a task list in Excel to plan your scheduling further. This list can help you organize your tasks and their due dates. You can also use other visual tools to create your timeline; whatever works for you! There are endless resources online to help you plot out this step.
Step 2: Create a Planning Team
If you’ve been planning events by yourself all along, you’ve probably already realized how hard it is to do by yourself. There is simply so much to do and so many moving parts; taking on the entire burden seems needlessly tiresome.
That’s why it’s a great idea to set up a team to help you plan! This way, you can delegate tasks and easily get the opinions of others to help you make the critical decisions that make up your event. Use mind maps and flip charts for your brainstorming sessions and practice teamwork before your team-building event even starts!
When you have a team to help you out, you also have a backup in case you need to delegate some of the workload or you have time off planned during the event planning process.
If you’re not sure how to start setting up your team for the planning process, you can try to start collaborating with your coworkers by asking for help with a quick and casual email like the one below.
Subject: Help Wanted! Team Building Event Planning
Hi All,
Some of you may know that I’ve recently taken on the task of organizing our department’s next team-building event, and I could use some help!
Please let me know by Friday if you are available to help me take care of a few planning details, such as:
Selecting the group activity
Booking a venue or location
Creating an agenda for the day
Thank you!
Step 3: Define Your Goal
Every team-building activity should have an objective or purpose to ensure it’s fun and effective. However, if you haven’t been told by your boss precisely what this purpose is, it may be hard to know how to start.
The best place to start may be the five “W” questions when you want to define your goal: Who? What? Where? Why? When?
Try to be very specific when answering each question, using details.
Here are sample answers to the five “W” questions that may help you out:
Who: All employees (120 people)
What: Bonding activity
Where: Dallas
Why: To connect departments
When: November
Put that all together, and here’s a clearly defined objective for a team-building event:
We want to connect everyone from across departments for a fun bonding activity this November in Dallas.
Step 4: Create a Guest List
Sometimes, determining your guest list will be as easy as counting the number of employees in a particular department, for example, a “sales team of 70 people.” However, other times, deciding on the attendees of a team-building activity may require a bit more effort.
If you’re struggling with the guest list, there are three important questions you can consider. To help you along:
Is this a mandatory event or can anyone sign up to attend?
What is the maximum number of people that the budget and venue allows?
Will individuals who work remotely be invited?
Once you answer these questions, it should be far easier to put together a rough idea of who will be attending.
Step 5: Create a Detailed Budget
The quickest way to put together a realistic budget is to simply talk to your boss and ask how much money is available for the event and what the expectations are for the budget.
However, things might get more complicated if your boss doesn’t have a concrete number for you. Then, you can ask about previous team-building activities to get an idea of what the budget has been in the past. From that point, you can align your costs with prior events.
You want to keep your budget realistic but leave a little wiggle room for unexpected expenses. It is important to budget for the following items:
Food and beverage
Activity providers
Transportation and parking
Venue booking and permits
Insurance
Fees including credit card charges
Create a budget table in Excel to plan out the costs for your activity and keep track of your expenses along the way.
Step 6: Pick a Date & Time
Picking a date and time might seem like the easiest part, but it can be one of the more challenging aspects of planning the event. You want to ensure that you take everyone’s busy schedules into consideration before finalizing these details.
For example, you may have key stakeholders who need to be at the event, so you’ll want to ensure that those individuals are available before you commit to a day and time. Depending on the activity you choose, sometimes you may be able to run your team-building event over a few hours or a few days to accommodate more people’s schedules.
You’ll also want to take seasonality and weather into account. If your whole team is set on an outdoor activity, it’ll be essential for you to pick a time of year that traditionally has good weather.
Step 7: Choose a Venue or Location
This is perhaps the most crucial step when creating a team-building activity, as it defines the entire event.
You’ll need to avoid venues that won’t be able to accommodate your group or activity. You’ll also want to make sure your venue or location isn’t too far away to cut down on travel time and costs.
Here are some questions you can consider to help you find the best venue or location for your event:
Will the team building activity be indoors or outdoors?
How many participants can the venue hold?
Are there extra amenities like Internet access, audio, or visual equipment?
Is parking available for employee cars or a company-hired bus service?
Is weather a factor that you need to consider?
Do you need a special permit or permission for outdoor areas?
If you consider the above questions, you’re sure to find a venue or location that’s ideal for your group’s event.
If you’re looking for the ultimate team-building destination, look no further than your local Main Event. With a corporate full facility buyout, you get the full run of our vast array of games and activities, including:
You can also add catering and AV options to make the event entirely your own.
Step 8: Create a Logistics Checklist
Once everything else has been decided, you can focus on the smaller logistics surrounding your event that will come up day-of. At this point, you will want to put together a detailed checklist to help prevent important things from falling through the cracks on the most important day.
These are some items you should consider including on your logistics checklist:
Transportation – Does the company handle transportation, or will participants be responsible for getting themselves to the activity?
Food & Drinks – Will the company provide food or drinks?
Liability Waivers – Will participants need to sign a waiver to attend?
Accommodation – Will participants be staying at an off-site location overnight?
What to Bring – What do participants need to know in advance? For example, should they bring clothing for wet weather?
Special Circumstances – What arrangements are needed for employees with disabilities or injuries?
Don’t want to spend time worrying about the details? Hire Main Event for a Full Facility Buyout, and we’ll handle all the prep, planning, and cleaning for your event!
Step 9. Create an Event Day Agenda
Of course, the team will want to know what they’re doing for your team-building activity. An agenda can help you schedule the day and easily communicate to your colleagues what they will do during the event.
Your agenda should highlight everything employees will be doing, including arrival and departure times, the duration of the activity, and meeting points.
We recommend distributing the agenda to participants in the weeks leading up to the event, but note that it may be subject to change. Not only will this help prepare attendees’ expectations for the day it will also get people excited about what they’ll be doing.
Events and Party Planning With Main Event
Main Event is the perfect place to host your upcoming corporate event or party. When booking a private full facility buyout, guests are brought together through games and handcrafted food from our bar and grill.
Our dedicated party hosts take care of the logistics, including prep, planning, and clean-up, so you can focus on uniting your team!
Packages include:
Unlimited activities - bowling and billiards, plus laser tag, gravity ropes, mini golf, and rock climbing where available
Unlimited video games
Private rooms
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