Team building is crucial for the success of any company. No matter if you run a small business, or you have a large corporate firm, you need to know how to engage your employees and how to help them collaborate and work together. The easiest way to do that is through activities where they can challenge each other, support each other, and just become better.
The issue in this is that you are going to need to put a lot of time, effort, and thought into creating a safe space where your employees can develop and work together. Here, we are going to help you out with that. Keep on reading to learn more about some fun outdoor team-building activities, and figure out how to plan them.
What Are Some Activities that You Can Plan?
Before deciding on an exact activity that you want to do is figuring out what the goal of this process is going to be. Some companies want to promote better communication skills, others want to help with the synergy in the company, and there are also those that want to reward the employees after a long season.
There are a lot of different activities that you can plan and you can easily spend a lot of time in nature without spending too much, or planning a lot. As you can see on Innovation Vista, when your team spends time together, they will be able to learn how to work together better, how to communicate, and how to work towards the same goal without the office pressure being there.
If you and your team are up for it, you can start planning a simple hike. This does not have to necessarily be something that is going to be way too difficult, time-consuming, or testing the limits of the team’s stamina. You can choose a hill or a small mountain to hike to, and when you reach the top, you can all sit down, have a picnic, or just have some coffee.
In addition to this, you can create fun activities like capturing the best photo, doing some treasure hunts, finishing a fun and challenging task in the designated time slot, or you can even play board games with your team outside while enjoying nature.
There are many different types of races that you can explore and here you can choose to do the race by walking, running, using electric bikes, skating, or anything else that you think your team can do without endangering their safety.
You can also get some canvas, paint, and sit down with your team in a field and try to paint a picture and incorporate things like sticks, leaves, flowers, and everything else and then choose the person who has been the most creative with this.
As you can see further down in this article, you don’t have to spend way too much to be able to do this. The best thing about outdoor activities is that you can choose to organize everything on your own without including a service, catering, or anything else.
You can even talk to your team members and get everyone to make some type of food at home that you will all share after you’re done with your adventure in nature.
How to Plan Them?
Now that you have a general idea of what you can get your team to do, the next step is figuring out how to plan the whole thing. The first thing that you need to do is figure out the best time that is going to work for everyone.
Decide if you want to do all this during office hours, and if that is something that is going to work for you and your business, or if you want to take a trip with your employees, or even plan something after office hours. All these things need to be communicated with your team, and you need to see if the whole thing is going to work out for them.
One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is trying to force a timeline that does not work for your employees, or even worse forcing them to partake in an activity that they don’t have time for. Make sure that you are open and honest about your plans, and be open to changes and accommodation depending on what exact type of activity you need to do.
Once you have an idea of where you’re going to go and the exact time that this is going to happen, the next step is seeing if you need to make any appointments or schedule something that will help you with the team-building activity.
Here are some ideas you can steal:
If you want to do something that revolves around relying on some other service, then you need to be open and straightforward on how many people are going to attend, how many hours you want to rent the space or service for, and agree on a specific price point.
The main things you need to focus on include being open and accepting of suggestions, creating solutions that are going to help accommodate everyone, and making sure that you stick with the budget that you have allotted for this specific activity.
If you want to make this a sort of a tradition, then you can collaborate with your employees and figure out how you can incorporate team-building activities every month or every quarter.
You can easily do different things, explore different adventures, and help your team work together without having to spend thousands of dollars. Yes, some activities are going to cost you a lot, however, they are going to be far better and more interesting than others. Kayaking is a fun team activity where everyone can have fun on a budget. All you need is to rent or buy a kayak!
Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money to create an activity. You can easily indulge in hiking, exploring nature, or even spending a weekend along with your coworkers where you will not have to spend way too much on the whole practice.
There are a lot of different team-building activities that you can explore, and you can decide what the best is depending on the size of the group, preferences, possible setbacks, as well as your budget.
The main thing is to find something that is going to be interesting for everyone and where all of your team members are going to feel included. See what your employees are interested in doing and see how that specific activity is going to affect your whole company and brand.