Tag: team building

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Why You Need To Invest In Team-Building Activities

The most important asset to any company is its employees. They are the backbone of the company, which is why it’s essential to make sure your team feels valued and appreciated. 

It’s unfortunate that the thought of ‘team building’ has become increasingly less exciting, or even seen as a waste of time. Despite this reputation, team-building is one of the most important investments you can make for your people. It builds trust, mitigates conflict, encourages communication and increases collaboration. 


Effective team building means more engaged employees, which is good for company culture and boosting the bottom line. Team-building is as adventurous as you want to make it, which is why we’re sharing a few thoughts to consider before you start planning, and the benefits you can hope to see as a result.

Don’t Force The Corporate Stuff

The most successful team-building events are the ones that don’t feel like a typical day in the office. Activities that overtly aim to draw in leadership lessons, or practical takeaways are often less successful. Spending time together, sharing an experience or working towards a common goal allows conversation and bonding to happen organically and far more effectively.

Team Building Is Not A Splurge, It’s An Investment

At the end of the day, you want to provide an activity that resonates well with your employees. You don’t have to overdo it, but don’t skimp out either. You want to leave your team feeling appreciated and valued, which ultimately lasts longer than the activity itself.

Team Building Boosts Employee Engagement

According to Museum Hack, employee engagement is one of the most crucial elements of a successful business. It demonstrates how much employees care about the company’s mission, and how hard they’re willing to work to ensure the company succeeds. 


Team building is a great way to boost employee engagement, morale, and show employees you care about their well being. Teams with highly engaged employees earn two times the annual net income of companies with low engagement levels.

Team Building Can Help You Attract And Retain Top Talent

Kathy Caprino at Forbes wrote an article describing how mega companies like Uber, Facebook, and Salesforce use team building to their advantage. One of the most insightful parts of the article came from a quote by team building expert Jenny Gottstein, who says the following:

“Interestingly, we’re seeing companies use their strong corporate culture as a bargaining chip to recruit the best and brightest talent. When applying for jobs, millennial employees are not only assessing their salary and benefits, but also whether or not they relate to the working environment, and enjoy rolling up their sleeves next to their peers. As a result of this culture shift, team-building is being used as a marketing and recruitment tool. Often we will produce games for prospective employees or interns of large companies as a way to show off the perks of the company’s working environment.”

Team Building Improves Communication

There are a wide variety of team building exercises, and most all of them require communication. Whether it’s strategizing, coordinating, or solving a problem, the need to communicate is inevitable when it comes to team building exercises. 

Let your employees engage with one another naturally, and watch their relationships grow!

With quality team building activities, you can foster unity among your team members and make them feel acknowledged and appreciated.

For more recommendations on increasing productivity at work, check out these additional articles on our blog today! Or, if you’re looking for a new position, see our current job listings!

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5-Minute Team Building Games Your Employees Will Actually Like

Team building exercises should be both educational and enjoyable for your staff. By implementing five-minute games into your meetings, your employees will develop their communication and problem solving skills while also growing and learning about one another. We have outlined our four favorite team building games for you to try at your next staff meeting. 

Four 5-Minute Team Building Exercises For Your Staff

1. Play a Quiz 

Create a quiz with five to 10 team building questions on it about your company history, future company goals, the boss’ background or any other relevant topic. Once your employees have finished the quiz, go through the questions and reveal the correct answers. If an employee gets an answer wrong, they are out. The last one standing wins!  

2. Describe and Draw 

Pair off your employees into teams of two. One person on each team will start with a blank piece of paper and the other’s paper will have a shape (e.g. circle, square, triangle, etc.) on it. Whoever starts with the paper with a shape, will need to describe the shape to their partner without saying the name of it. Their partner will need to listen and draw their interpretation of whatever they think their teammate is describing. At the end, have a short de-briefing and learn how each employee communicates and receives messages differently.

3. Object Memory

Create a list of at least 30 words. They can be related to a topic of your choice or random. Display the list for your employees to view for one minute while they try to memorize as many words as possible. After one minute, hide the list and ask everyone to write down as many words as they can remember. See who remembered the most. Repeat this game with a new list of 30 words, and let your employees try in teams. They will quickly see that they can remember more words when they collaborate. Debrief and discuss assumptions about working individually vs. collaborating. 

4. Purpose Mingle

This is a quick and easy team building game that will improve your employees’ productivity and get them thinking about how they will contribute to an office meeting. Before your next meeting, have each individual walk around and share what they hope to contribute to the meeting with as many of their colleagues as possible. If applicable, you can offer a prize to the employee who shares with the most people, and another for the employee who successfully contributes what they intended.

Developing an efficient team doesn’t have to be tedious or an overwhelming challenge. Most leaders and managers today are beginning to understand that we get more out of our employees when they feel valued, and team building activities are an easy way to get employees recognized. Entertain your employees while reinforcing company values in an engaging and lasting manner. 

At Josephine’s Professional Staffing, we offer solutions to staffing, retention and productivity issues. For more recommendations on building your team, read additional articles on our blog today! Or, if you’re looking for a new position, see our current job listings!