Team Building vs Team Outing
Recently you’ve noticed that your team is lackluster – communication has dropped, motivation has disappeared, 
and you haven’t seen a smile in weeks. You decide to make it better by planning a team outing! You make a reservation at a bowling alley at noon on a Friday; you tell the team it’s on you, and you all have a great time eating, drinking, socializing, and playing games without typical workplace interruptions. Then Monday rolls around and you walk in expecting laughter and friendly banter only to find more of the same frowns and seriousness of the weeks before. The fact is, you confused team building – a real solution – with a team outing. Here are the top three reasons you should drop team outings and run to call and schedule your team building event today:
Team building builds your team.
Fun and games are great motivators for a team needing to build or hone certain skills, but team outings provide the fun with no real structure or results-driven process. Team building offers that same level of fun but does so in a way that keeps the end goal of the activity in mind. Team building activities can be enjoyable, but the important part is that they are also constructive because they are designed and facilitated with a goal in mind – the success of your team.
Team building events are unique.
It is a common misconception that your employees want to have “fun time” at work to enjoy things that they would normally do on weekends. Most employees are not actually craving a visit to a favorite happy hour with their colleagues because there is value in maintaining a separation between work and play. Team building helps to keep the line drawn between personal and professional lives by bringing structured activities into a space that is safe and equal for everyone. Team building events are unique to the goal in mind and the group participating, so they can operate outside of any concerns over the right time or the right place and instead just focus in on the ways to build a stronger team.
Team building offers the biggest bang for your buck.
While it may seem like an afternoon at a local place must be cheaper than a team building alternative, let’s break it down. Small Group Team Building focuses mostly on groups of four to 60 employees. Let’s cut it in the middle and say that you have a team of 30 you are working with. At a place like Dave and Buster’s, that breaks down to at least one drink, one entree, and one game card per person. On average, even with “special” group rates, you are likely going to spend an average of more than $30 per person. That leaves you dropping a cool $1,000 with no real team unification to show for it. Small Group Team Building offers affordable rates with real results, clearly making it the stronger and more cost-efficient option.
There is no reason that you cannot have fun with the people you work with, but there is also no reason that the fun you have cannot serve the greater purpose of strengthening your team. With a facilitator and a structured activity, team building allows your team to break down barriers, find solutions, and walk away from a stronger team than when they came into the event.
