How you can build team spirit within your corporate culture | 5 team building ideas that work

Whether your business operates remotely, with a hybrid structure, or in person, it’s important to foster team spirit, but that’s a lot easier said than done. 

Team building is a necessary part of keeping departments and business functions thriving, as a tightly knit team brings a synergy and group dynamic to problem solving that individuals working in isolation just aren’t capable of. It’s an evergreen business challenge that the old school has had a few swings at and consistently missed, so if your eyes roll into the back of your head at the mere mention of trust falls and post-it notes on foreheads, read on…

We’re going to discuss 5 ways to help your employees bond and build real team spirit.

1. Hold team building retreats

One powerful way to strengthen team bonds is through team building retreats. These retreats, or trips away, provide an opportunity for employees to engage in activities outside the office or work environment, fostering camaraderie and a sense of unity.

Whether it’s a weekend getaway to a scenic location or a day-long excursion, team building retreats can be arranged to encourage employees to work together, develop trust, and communicate more effectively.

Whatever the nature of your team building retreat, you can use the Drimify platform to easily create, publish, and distribute gamification experiences as part of the event. Consider including customised Quizzes to test what your teams have learned, or branded classic games to stoke competition amongst your ranks in a lower pressure environment. You could even customise a Survey after the retreat to get feedback in order to improve subsequent team outings.

2. Arrange peer-to-peer training

Peer-to-peer training is a valuable strategy for building team spirit while simultaneously enhancing skills and knowledge. It boils down to encouraging employees to share their expertise and mentor one another in areas where they excel, or even assigning specific coaching or teaching tasks to your high performers.

By empowering team members to teach and learn from one another, you can not only foster a sense of camaraderie, but also promote continuous learning and professional growth within your organisation. You can also use Drimify to create customised Quizzes to test that employees really have learned what they need to know, giving you all the benefits of the peer-to-peer approach, but with the peace of mind that comes with a more structured and traditional approach. It’s a method of promoting skills-sharing and adopting a culture of success. Iron sharpens iron, so let your best and brightest elevate your entire organisation.

3. Choose the right online collaboration tools

Team building in the modern workplace requires modern solutions. Remote and hybrid working structures give office dynamics and culture minimal space to breathe, and make asking a simple question for an on-the-spot answer more challenging, so digital solutions that can bridge the physical distance between employees are essential.

Operating on a complete internal communications package such as MS Teams, Yammer, Workplace, Google Workspace, Slack, etc., goes beyond just emailing and video conferencing. It allows your employees to track projects, fast-track information for faster decision making, and allows you as an employer to bring agility and connection back to the workplace.

4. Hold volunteer days

Engaging in philanthropic initiatives as a team can have an enormous impact on team spirit. By organising volunteer days, employees can come together to support a cause they are passionate about. Whether it’s participating in community service projects, or supporting local charities, volunteer days foster teamwork, empathy, and a greater sense of shared purpose.

Additionally, contributing to the greater good can instil a sense of pride and fulfilment within your team, and pride and fulfilment for being part of an altruistic company.

5. Plan escape rooms

There’s a reason this trend picked up steam over the past few years – people love a challenge, and human beings are anthropologically predisposed to collaborate, that’s how our ancestors survived millenia ago in a world full of megafauna like woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and sabre-toothed tigers.

Take your team to an escape room, where they must work together to solve puzzles and challenges to escape from the room before the time runs out. This activity not only promotes teamwork, because they’re designed in such a way as to require more than one set of eyes, but also problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Plus, who doesn’t love a good mystery to solve?

Are your team hundreds of miles apart or even separated by time zones and vast bodies of water? No problem. Using Drimify’s Dynamic Path™ format, you can create a digital escape room, combining any number of games for your employees to find clues and solve a broader over-aching mystery.

Key takeaway

In summary, team building shouldn’t be dull or routine. If your teams are bonding over how silly or unproductive a team building experience has been, or laughing because Jeremy missed Mark during the trust fall exercise, you’ve made a mistake. You want all of them to unite behind your efforts, not a couple of them in isolation.

By incorporating more creative, more modern solutions like corporate retreats, peer-to-peer mentoring, online collaboration tools, gamification, volunteer days, and escape rooms, you can provide effective team building experiences for your employees that will promote and foster real team spirit.