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Creative Team Building Exercises

Guest post by: Walder Lugo

Article Overview: As a once active participant in the corporate rat race, I found most so-called "Team Building" exercises to be outright mundane. It seems that most companies want to extract as much as possible from every employee and fail to reciprocate when they are called to do the same. I've had the pleasure of working with several organizations who have taken the challenge of building a stronger, more cohesive unit to a whole new level. I will share with you some creative and effective ideas for your next team building exercise.

Creative Team Building Exercises

Team building exercises have become very common throughout the "Corporate World". Many companies use these exercises as way to foster a sense of community within the workplace. It gives everybody an opportunity to get to know each other away from the cubicle. In my experiences, most of these team building exercises were fun, but in an elementary school kind of way. I remember one company I worked forwhere we would play Hangman after our team meetings. That was their way of trying to build team unity. As owner of a promotional advertising company, I'm always trying to look for products or methods to market someone's brand. Every now and again, I receive requests from clients that leave me saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"

I'd like to share with you a couple of examples of how some companies are trying to put the exercise into Team Building.

Case Study # 1

So I received a call from a new client on a Wednesday who was frantically trying to secure some football jerseys for Monday morning. I always assume when I get a call for football jerseys that it's for a sports team...until now. She went on to explain to me that the jerseys were for a company team building event that they were going to be holding at a Laser Tag facility. She had me at Laser Tag. She explained to me that they were going to be splitting off into 2 teams..The Sharpshooters and The Untouchables...and that they had originally thought about just getting some t shirts made up. They decided on football jerseys because they felt it would help make the event more authentic. In addition, the jerseys can be worn at other company functions and Casual Fridays. Here's a company that gets it...I mean they really get it. Now I understand that not every company can afford to have custom football jerseys made for all of their employees but thats not the point. The point is that this company in the case study did not have to provide jerseys but they felt it would make the experience more enjoyable...they went the extra mile and based on the feedback that I received after the event, the jerseys were a hit. Some of the people liked the jerseys so much that they wanted to see about ordering more. If you give them something nice to wear guess what....they might wear it with your company name and logo across the front. The employee feedback led me to believe that this company respects their workforce and return, the workforce respects the company. I was not surprised to hear that the company has a very low turnover ratio and most of the employees at this office had tenure of more than 10 years. Those are facts that you just can't ignore.

They stepped out of the box and put together a team building event that left a lasting impression.

Case Study #2

A telemarketing firm called me one day because they were interested in getting some ideas on how they can create a different atmosphere within their call center. Anybody who is familiar with a call center environment knows that it's loud and in most cases just a sea of cubicles. Due to the nature of telemarketing, they experience a high turn around and thus they are always hiring. When most people come to me they are usually thinking in the box..let's order some polo's...or we can do some t shirts and mugs...rarely does anyone truly know what they want. After listening to him explain to me what it is that they do and how they are set up I suggested that since the telemarketers are already seperated into teams, why not do some custom baseball jerseys in different colors...we can imprint the team name across the front...put a number on the back and this could be fun. Well it was a homerun...the managers got together and held a ColorLottery to choose the team colors and rolled out the jerseys to the respective teams a week later. The employees felt a stronger bond with each other because it really felt like they were on a team, according to one of the managers. I heard recently that quite a few of the employees have joined a Co-Ed Softball team league and you guessed it...they're wearing their team jerseys.

In both of these cases the companies were looking for creative ways to foster team unity and I think they both did a great job of that. I'm a firm believer that if you give employees the impression that you care that they will be better employees.

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Article Tags: baseball jerseys, brand marketing, cohesive unit, corporate rat race, creative team, custom imprinted jerseys, custom shirts, football jerseys, team apparel, team building exercise, teamapparelusa, uniforms



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