Team building without the ick

[beesonthewhatnow]

Too many team building excercises make things worse with a lack of sincerity and accumulated work to be done later.

Describe good team building events you have been on please so I can shamelessly incorporate the best into my work.

Pay them more and give an extra days holiday. Nobody gives a fuck about anything else really.

 

[ice-is-forming]

More recent team building has seen us snorkeling. Playing games at a virtual reality place and Playing escape the room.

We went out for dinner and played truth or lie ( this was actually so much fun, I couldn't stop laughing.. hearing some really funny stories )

We always hold our team meetings in a pub anyway, were accross a big region so every 3 months we meet in this one pub town that's in the middle of nowhere, but central for all of us

 

[davesgcr]

Spent a day clearing some of the horrendous growth at Nunhead Cemetary (very satisfying as we did the paupers section and exposed graves lost under boscage for maybe 30 years+) , followed by a guided tour of the catacombs ,a good buffet lunch then a pub visit.

Better than building a bridge out of pasta which was a previous (pointless) one.....

 

[steveseagull]

Best one was when I was working for an independent mobile phone retailer. We became Orange's highest performer and the boss took us all to a country hotel for the weekend and plonked a massive bag of coke and a shitload of weed on the table and told us to get stuck in. You should do this.

 

[ouirdeaux]

Where do I sign?

 

[bellaozzydog]

Spent a day clearing some of the horrendous growth at Nunhead Cemetary (very satisfying as we did the paupers section and exposed graves lost under boscage for maybe 30 years+) , followed by a guided tour of the catacombs ,a good buffet lunch then a pub visit.

Better than building a bridge out of pasta which was a previous (pointless) one.....

Who do you work for, The Cure?

 

[davesgcr]

Who do you work for, The Cure?

At the time , some years back - I did a short term job for the Dept of Transport.

 

[mx wcfc]

Thought this thread may benefit from a repost of something I put up on the office scolding email thread a couple of weeks ago....

"As discussed with some of you, we are really keen to get a good turnout for this [office social] event (which has been rearranged from a previous cancellation in February), given that:

• The purpose of the socials is to reinforce/ build up the culture and team spirit of [company name] and to encourage people to make new internal contacts in a relaxed environment
• The members of the [x] team who have organised the event have put quite a bit of effort into devising it
• We have made a booking commitment to Walkabout [haha hahahaha] bar, which we felt was going to be a much more successful location than [our office] for example.

We have heard from our teams that we don’t celebrate enough and if we can generate a good turnout, this social and future ones will help address that.

Please can I therefore encourage you to a) come along if possible (and let S, R and me know); and b) promote it amongst your teams."

I appreciate that for some teams it will be difficult due to workloads, but this event has been in the diary (and trailed) for some time and I think that for many people, a chance to get out and have a bit of fun at the beginning of Spring will be a great help for morale and wellbeing and will create momentum for future events."

My office leaders are unable to cope with the idea of a good evening out, without a competitive element, and a visit to a hole like Walkabout.

(It's tonight. i am not there).

 

[Throbbing Angel]

We, the team I was in, were dropped on Saddleworth Moor once and told to get to some location 10 miles away without any navigational equipment.

I worked in a Bank

 

[Orang Utan]

Only had three fun ones:
Getting hammered at Epsom Downs on free wine and getting overexcited about tiny bets on the geegees
Getting hammered on free wine, beer, gin cocktails, absinthe cocktails and poitin BUT NO FOOD - we had no more away days after that because of what occurred that day
A paintballing excursion with an unpopular manager on one of the two teams. His own team wordlessly and spontaneously mutinied and it became 20 or so on one management cunt, ruthlessly gunning him down in a scene resembling Willem Dafoe’s death scene in Platoon. Even better, the paint balls we were using were ‘silver’ but they looked exactly like jizz when they burst all over him until he resembled, well, you know. His name was Barry so no prizes what his nickname was from henceforth.

 

[Looby]

We’ve had a couple of fun days in my current team. An escape room and electric shuffle and both were really fun plus a decent lunch.

In another job we had a gong bath and mindfulness session which was actually less awful than it sounds.

It needs to be stuff that isn’t ‘work’ at all and doesn’t exclude people so nothing too physical in a team of people with physical disabilities etc

 

[StoneRoad]

Tried various "team building" and "team social events" when working at various places over the years.

Usually fairly useless exercises, but sometimes fun. Although I draw the line at laying railway track during the second week in January !

Went to a laser-quest once, which wasn't too bad, although way too noisy & flashy lights for my taste. About the only really amusing thing was the number of times the various directors got shot in the back !

However, the interior designers had "away-days/nights" when we went on "spying missions" to see how various pubs / nightclubs etc turned out in actual use [and venues not all our own work !]. Also included hotel, meal{s} and drinks etc ... they also had a ball doing a costumed photoshoot for the crimble card ...

 

[WouldBe]

The best team building is just giving the team time off

“Crack this task early and you can fuck off early”

Develops a level of team building that a meditative sound bath weekend or naked paintballing could ever hope to achieve

Sounds fun. Where can you do that?

 

[equationgirl]

Oh! I remembered I did one at the last employer but one. We all got split into teams and had to do some kind of murder mystery clue hunting thing. I tried to get out of it because I was in a lot of pain but was told to just do what I could. Which turned out to be not very much because the events people had set up crime scene tape everywhere and I couldn't step over it very well.

I had a call with a colleague about halfway through so excused myself. Neither of us were particularly enthralled with away days so were happy to do a call with the US office.

 

[equationgirl]

The thing about away days is that very few people even remember that they have those with physical limitations on staff, never mind taking five minutes to think through if the activity being suggested is actually doable if someone can't walk, bend, get up and down repeatedly, can't stand on concrete for more than 15 minutes or is in pain.

 

[quiet guy]

Will no one think of the poor consultant who has sold these ideas to the company as the bees knees solution to improving team dynamics?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Yes, it's odd that some firms seem to forget that equalities law applies to this sort of thing, and health and safety.

place i used to work was very hot on health and safety box ticking (i don't think they seriously cared whether we lived or died, just so long as they couldn't be sued either way) and you were hardly allowed out of the office without a risk assessment, but they sent the graduate scheme people on some sort of outdoor activities thing as part of their scheme.

About the only serious suggestion on here that sounds halfway sensible is the idea of going out and doing something useful in the community / local environment, but even then there's issues of h+s and equalities (for example if you sent a bunch of office workers out to clean up a local park or something.)

 

[Orang Utan]

The thing about away days is that very few people even remember that they have those with physical limitations on staff, never mind taking five minutes to think through if the activity being suggested is actually doable if someone can't walk, bend, get up and down repeatedly, can't stand on concrete for more than 15 minutes or is in pain.

Plus the fact that not everyone can or will drink alcohol to help gel working relationships, so having boozy jollies is not exactly inclusive, even for those who drink, as people do shitty things to each other when tanked up on free booze

 

[weepiper]

The thing about away days is that very few people even remember that they have those with physical limitations on staff, never mind taking five minutes to think through if the activity being suggested is actually doable if someone can't walk, bend, get up and down repeatedly, can't stand on concrete for more than 15 minutes or is in pain.

Yes. Or if anyone is non-neurotypical. Some of these examples are bringing me out in a cold sweat thinking about how tf to navigate them.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

we had no more away days after that because of what occurred that day

we need details, if not photographs...

 

[Orang Utan]

we need details, if not photographs...

The photographs, and how they were distributed, were one of the reasons that aways days were cancelled…

 

[SpookyFrank]

The best thing for team building is having something worthwhile for the team to do.

Lots of companies do absolutely nothing, so they have to buy in artificial team spirit from another company that also does nothing. It's like digging to get out of a hole.

 

[Boudicca]

I've got a friend who is London based who teaches African drumming if you fancy that. He mostly teaches in school but I reckon it would work for team building.

 

[Orang Utan]

I've got a friend who is London based who teaches African drumming if you fancy that. He mostly teaches in school but I reckon it would work for team building.

It wouldn’t!

 

[lazythursday]

Yes, it's odd that some firms seem to forget that equalities law applies to this sort of thing, and health and safety.

place i used to work was very hot on health and safety box ticking (i don't think they seriously cared whether we lived or died, just so long as they couldn't be sued either way) and you were hardly allowed out of the office without a risk assessment, but they sent the graduate scheme people on some sort of outdoor activities thing as part of their scheme.

About the only serious suggestion on here that sounds halfway sensible is the idea of going out and doing something useful in the community / local environment, but even then there's issues of h+s and equalities (for example if you sent a bunch of office workers out to clean up a local park or something.)

I used to work for an organisation that did lots of park / green space improvements, and we had an endless stream of companies that wanted to do stuff for team building, but didn't want to pay for it. Risk assessments, staffing, materials etc all costs money.

 

[A380]

We, the team I was in, were dropped on Saddleworth Moor once and told to get to some location 10 miles away without any navigational equipment.

I worked in a Bank

That’s funny, I had a mate in 3 Para and they did a team building event spending a day setting up arranged overdrafts for HSBC customers….

 

[Sue]

I've been to loads and they've pretty much all been godawful. Shudder to even think about them.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

That’s funny, I had a mate in 3 Para and they did team building event spending a day setting up arranged overdrafts for HSBC customers….

i bet the customers thought twice about going over their overdraft limit

 

[The39thStep]

I'm not at all sure how many of these examples of 'team building actually build teams tbh . Presumably, these activities should be able to show some impact or outcome ie higher staff satisfaction, staff identifying strengths/weaknesses PDPs , better relationships at work ,better communication, higher productivity/improved /outcomes?

 

[Orang Utan]

perhaps politicians should do away-years in which they have to survive on £70 a week in a single damp vermin-infested room