Have you considered team building activities to renew your employees’ level of engagement?

As employees become more comfortable in their roles in your company, their sense of teamwork and dedication can begin to wane. Even top employees start to step back and get a little “cozy.”

This coziness enables some employees to step back and do the job without actively engaging with the others around them. Over time, this can lead to “the bad apple” syndrome where one negative employee can “spoil the bunch,” to paraphrase an old wives’ tale.

As a result, employees begin to feel negative about their roles, care less about providing excellent service, resent their co-workers, and even progress to quitting the job in time.

If you’re sensing that employee engagement is lagging in your company, it’s time to shake things up. Try boosting morale with team building activities to rekindle the embers within your staff.

What team building activities are and how they work?

Are you skeptical about the value of teambuilding activities? Let’s start by explaining more fully why these group activities help to foster a renewed sense of commitment.

Team games work by prompting your employees to collaborate to reach a goal. Successful completion of the goal demonstrates that your employees work more effectively collectively as a team than as individuals each pursuing varied goals.

As they work to complete the given task, they must communicate effectively, work within defined roles for the common good, trust each other, and solve problems in a meaningful way. Each team member gains trust in one another as they accomplish the tasks necessary to achieve the goal.

Just think of how smoothly your business could run if only you were able to convince them to carry this knowledge of problem-solving back into their job functions. But, wait…you can!

Just incorporate fun, short team games into your company culture. The repetition provides a framework that you can continue to build on each week.

Identifying low employee engagement

Not sure if you need to try group activities to bolster engagement? Here are some signs of low employee morale that can lead to disengagement.

Absenteeism:

If you see noticeable drops in attendance or increasing tardiness, your employees may be losing the desire to come to work.

Employee complaints or conflicts:

Are you feeling more like a sports referee than a manager? If you have a staff who once got along famously but are now constantly complaining over petty issues or becoming jealous of each other, this is a serious warning signal of imminent issues.

These seemingly petty complaints can rage out of control and result in increasing dissatisfaction amongst the staff.

Reduced customer service:

Perhaps the most frustrating situation for a manager is when employees fail to prioritize customer service. If you suddenly see negative reviews or feedback comments from customers, it could indicate a lack of employee apathy.

While the root causes of each of these symptoms of low engagement can vary, the fact remains that you must correct it, and fast!

Have an open-door policy, allowing employees to discuss positive input and offer constructive criticism. When employees feel that you really hear them, they feel appreciated and remain happily on the job for many years.

You can take the temperature of your staff by requesting that
they complete an employee satisfaction survey.

employee satisfaction survey

Assure your staff that there will be no retaliation for their opinions and make it a safe forum for them to be honest. After all, you cannot fix the root of the wavering engagement and morale if you don’t know what is causing the negative energy.

Take measures to solve the problems that precipitated the hard feelings, and begin rebuilding team confidence by working on team building.

Team building games

Be prepared. When you first announce to your staff that you’re doing a team building game at the weekly meeting, they will snicker or scoff. That’s normal. These activities take everyone out of their comfort zone and shake up that comfortable rut.

Here are some fun games that will have your team working together again in 30 minutes or less.

Letters from customers

Set a timer for 3 minutes. Have each team member pretend they are a customer and write a brief letter to your company. This can be a glowing review or a complaint. Assure them that punctuation, spelling, and grammar don’t matter–the goal is to share honest thoughts.

Have each person read their letter aloud. This helps you covertly uncover some issues you may be unaware of while coaxing your staff into giving praise to each other.

After each person has read their letters, fill a whiteboard with any underlying common themes. This activity helps team members recognize outstanding contributors, underscore opportunities for improvement, and identify weak points in the company’s systems.

If you have a larger team, break down to groups of four to five to keep the time from running over 30 minutes.

The spider web

Ask your team to gather in a circle facing each other. Give a first person a ball of yarn.

The first person will make a statement about something they like, such as “I like to play soccer.” Another person who agrees that they also like to play soccer speaks up and says, “Me, too.” Participant #1 hold the end of the yarn and passes the ball of yarn to Participant #2.

That second person makes a statement about something they like, hold the yarn, and pass the ball to the next respondent. Play until everyone is holding a piece of yarn.

This uncovers common interests among your team, allows everyone to get to know your shy team members a little better, and demonstrates how the team is all intertwined with each other.

Two truths, one lie

A quick and easy teambuilding game that can also yield hilarious results is Two truths, one lie.

With this activity, each participant will give three statements, and the other team members must guess which sentence is the lie.

Here’s an example. A participant might say:

The other employees must then try to guess the true statement. The truthful comment is not always the obvious one, and you will learn some outrageous and interesting facts about each other.

This game builds trust by allowing your team members to open up to each other in a safe environment.

The Bottom Line

Playing team building games can fast track your employees back into a better frame of mind by building trust between team members and management. It also instills a sense of fun that shows your employees that you do have their welfare at heart and will strive to make positive changes in the workplace.

By leading team activities every week or two, you will be back seeing more engaged, happier, and productive staff in no time at all.


EmailMeForm can help you create employee satisfaction surveys that your employees can answer anonymously.

Start with this survey template, add your own questions, and send the form link to your employees via email to start gathering their feedback.

employee feedback survey

Author Deborah Tayloe

Deborah Tayloe

Deborah is a blogger and freelancer who often writes for EmailMeForm. When she’s not blogging, you’ll probably find Deborah working on DIY projects around her home in North Carolina.

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