4 Important Team Building Tips for Small Business

Employees are the lifeblood of any business and investing in your workforce will ensure you have the skills to drive your company forward. Team building is an integral part of this, enabling you to ensure employees are working towards the same goals as you and identify areas for improvement. However, in the commotion of a typical working day, training staff can often get left by the wayside. After all, planning the agenda and finding a suitable location can be difficult (Find out more about a great training venue here). Yet failing to properly develop your team could impact upon your business’ output and ability to retain staff over the long-term. Here are a few reasons why it is important to focus on team building.


1. Improved inter-departmental communicationMany businesses are guilty of failing to pass information up and across the chain of command – a lack of communication that can often lead to errors and inefficiencies. This is usually a result of inadequate knowledge about the activities of others in the company and how this relates to certain overarching policies and initiatives. Team building sessions are the best way to address this, enabling different departments to come together and share ideas, experiences, concerns and successes. As staff become better acquainted with the goals and pressures of others,communication is likely to improve. You will also be able gauge the barriers to healthy discourse.

2. Enhancing motivation and productivityTeam building is a great way to enhance staff motivation, ensuring employees feel like a vital part of a business’ overall goals. For employers, it acts as a chance to communicate important principles and passions to workers; getting them on-board with initiatives and making it clear how the organisation is there to help them and others. This will in turn increase productivity, as happy workers that feel valued are more fruitful and focused. What’s more, team building demonstrates to employees that you are willing to invest in them in the long-term, giving them the confidence they need.
Goal setting

Closely related to communication and motivation, team building events are an opportunity to set tangible goals for the business and, more specifically, for individual departments. Aims can be explained in detail to an organisation en masse, giving each employee the same level of understanding and ensuring everyone is on the same page. What’s more, goal setting is integral for motivation and productivity, giving staff something to aim for and a justification for certain activities.

3. Discussing strengths and weaknessesIdentifying what you do well and what you do badly is an important part of honing your business and creating best practice. Team meetings are a great way to help participants learn more about their own strengths and weaknesses, discussing successes and failures across a company or department. This way it is possible to come up with solutions to address problems and ensure a high standard is consistently maintained.

4. Enhance collaborationTeam building sessions give staff the chance to practice effective collaboration with team members, which can then be reapplied in the workplace. Staff can see that by working together it is much easier to reach a common goal, further highlighting the importance of effective communication between employees and departments. Collaborative team building activities also create an important sense of comradery, making workplaces a more positive place to be.