Summary: What are Team Builders and how can they benefit your company? We cover 3 key ways your intranet can assist with Team Builders including; event promotion, reinforcement of knowledge and sharing the experience!

Companies are modernizing the way they conduct business, including how co-workers engage with one another. In the past, you were unlikely to meet employees from other departments until major events, such as the annual Holiday Party. We posed the question; why wait?

Getting to know your co-workers not only comes in handy during the holiday season. Pulling a name of someone you don’t know for Secret Santa can bring a wave of panic over the most composed of us, but year round team builders can positively affect the productivity and happiness of employees, and your intranet is a useful tool to help!

What are team builders?

Team Builders, also known as team building activities, are activities or events that help employees learn to work together in a creative way, even if they don’t work together day-to-day. They can also help individuals understand how others learn, work and think, and inspire some self-reflection to balance their differences and pull together to solve a problem. Some popular Team Builders as of recent are:

• Escape Rooms
• Scavenger Hunts
• Cooking Classes

How do you decide teams?

The goal of Team Builders is to ensure all employees work together as a cohesive unit where strengths are identified and knowledge is utilized. Consider the following questions when building teams:

Do you see people clashing when they work together on a project?
When people clash it tends to be a result of communication issues. A Team Builder is a ‘fun’ environment that gives employees a shared goal. To achieve that goal together they’ll have to learn what each other needs; patience? visuals?

Are you noticing cliques forming? Example: are some co-workers becoming isolated?
This is an indication that they may not have enough in common ‘personally’ to relate at work. Give them a shared experience that can provide a foundation to build upon.

Are there departments that seldom cross paths?
Regardless if someone is in HR or IT, having open communication between departments ensures a flow of knowledge and helps individuals overcome roadblocks.

How can your intranet help?

Although team Builders are offline experiences, you can use your intranet as an online tool to promote, reinforce and share what was learned!

Promoting a Team Builder Event

To have a successful team building event, you have to ensure everyone is aware, available and excited. The organizer can check their intranet’s Vacation Calendar to find a day when that most employees are available for. To double check, get in touch with department managers via their contact information on the intranet’s Employee Directory to confirm availability. Once a day is selected, add it to the Event Calendar. Be sure to ‘advertise’ the event so it can be populated on your home page for everyone to see.

Tip: Need employees to RSVP? Create an Online Form that allows people to tell you they’re coming!

Reinforcing Knowledge

Don’t let the knowledge collected at your Team Builder event be forgotten. Encourage co-workers to write about their experiences or add a section to their Employee Profile ‘About Me’ that reflects on fun events. Team Builders are great for co-workers, managers and executives alike. Promote the key achievements from your experience in a blog post or provide Employee Recognition to a team that completed the challenge. Keep the ball rolling with creative ways to promote and reinforce the experiences of the event.

Sharing the Experience

There are a variety for tools your intranet can provide when it comes to Enterprise Social Networking Tools. A Team Builder event is a great time to show company, and team, pride so have someone take photos! Not only can photos be added to your intranet’s Photo Album to reflect on a great time, they can also be used down the road at other offline events such as a slideshow at the Holiday Party.

Tip: Make sure your Photo Gallery is on the home page. Employee’s will be excited to connect with your intranet if they know they’ll make a cameo appearance. I think that’s what made Yearbooks so popular!

Team Builders reinforce the fact that you and your co-workers, despite department or personal differences, are working together towards a common goal; the success of your company. Have you used your intranet to promote Team Builders? We want to hear from you in the comment section below!