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Team-building activities are perfect for strengthening professional relationships, developing skills and showing staff appreciation. Arranging fun, meaningful activities is at the core of creating a successful team-building event, but finding creative ideas can often be challenging.
With this guide to team-building activity ideas, you can feel inspired and explore elements of a successful team-building activity, including good catering, the seven C’s of teamwork and more.
Ideas for Team Development Activities
The best part of organizing team-building events is the ability to tailor them to your company. You can draw inspiration from these cool team-building activities to put together a memorable event:
A Games and Exercises Day
For a fun day at the office, consider having an all-day games day. You can include a variety of ice-breakers and play Pictionary, charades, Trivial Pursuit and other board games.
The best part of hosting a games day is that it’s easy to organize and highly interactive, making it a fun and simple way to foster connections. It is also cost-saving, as most of these simple games require nothing more than a whiteboard and some markers.
A Work Picnic
Picnics are relaxed and social, and they get the whole team outdoors — the perfect combination for a team-building event. You can start the picnic off with some fun ice-breakers and conversation-starters and break up the day with outdoor activities like tug-of-war.
To take your team-building picnic to the next level, consider catering the event with boxed lunches. This takes the hassle and expectation out of everyone packing their own snacks, letting you use the time to show employees appreciation and have fun.
An Outdoor Cook-Off
Consider hosting an office potluck or an outdoor cook-off for a highly social and interactive event! Coworkers can break off into smaller groups for more meaningful interactions and have a fun afternoon cooking an amazing meal together.
The event becomes even more enjoyable when voting starts — everyone gets to taste all the different meals and choose winners for the most creative dishes, the best-tasting food and the best presentation!
A Sports Day
Nothing ignites a team spirit like sports! A sports day is fun, rewarding and teamwork-focused. Some ideas for a work sports event include:
- Obstacle courses
- Soccer
- Hula-hooping challenge
- Tug-of-war
- Relay race
- Wheelbarrow race
The most important part of planning a sports day for team building is finding activities for all fitness levels and abilities. With the proper preparation, you can host an inclusive work event the whole team can enjoy.
Why Team-Building Activities Are Important
The benefits of team-building exercises for work include:
- Increasing productivity: Coworkers are encouraged to work together to achieve common goals and reap the benefits of reaching objectives.
- Boosting morale and building company culture: Having a break from hard work and routine to do something fun and social is an excellent way to build company culture, boost team morale and help coworkers establish better professional relationships.
- Developing skills: Teams can develop many skills with the plethora of team-building activities. You can explore creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, interpersonal skills and more.
- Discovering new leadership: Team-building activities are a good way to challenge coworkers to get out of their comfort zones, and as a result, these events can highlight potential leaders.
Vital Aspects of Successful Team Building
Consider these three elements of a successful team-building event so that your next one can run more smoothly and be more enjoyable:
The Seven C’s of Team Effectiveness
You can design your events around the seven C’s of team building:
- Communication: The exchange of ideas between employees
- Collaboration: Working together to achieve a common goal
- Coordination: Organizing activities and tasks for efficient progress
- Cooperation: Mutual participation and assistance among team members
- Commitment: Loyalty and commitment toward the team’s goals
- Creativity: Promoting innovative ideas and problem-solving
- Celebration: Rewarding team members’ achievements
The seven C’s of teamwork are not hard-and-fast rules that you need to apply to each event or activity, but rather a guideline for understanding what you want to achieve from the activities and how you can accomplish them. The wonderful part of using the seven C’s of teamwork as a framework is that they also allude to the benefits you can enjoy from successful team-building exercises.
Engaging Activities
Ice-breakers and similar exercises have a place in team-building events, but they can also be games that everyone has played countless times — making these activities feel redundant, repetitive and boring.
That’s why it’s important to focus on a variety of activities and make them as unique and engaging as possible. To choose the right activities, you should also have meaningful and attainable objectives set for the day and provide all the resources team members need to participate fully in all activities.
Delicious Food
One sure way you can elevate your team-building events is by prioritizing catering! Food is an essential part of social interactions, and it’s one thing everyone looks forward to after an exceptionally busy day.
Here’s how catering adds to team-building events:
- Enhances the experience: Food is an integral part of any event — and something that coworkers will talk about and remember from the day. By providing a delicious meal, you make the event that much more enjoyable and memorable. Being treated to a delicious meal is always a winner.
- Provides a break that encourages interactions: Team-building times are often jam-packed, so it is important to schedule breaks for refreshing and refueling. Good catering ensures breaks are something to look forward to and encourages coworkers to socialize and interact while they eat.
- Adds a personalized element: With the right caterers, you can add a personalized element to your team-building activities that coworkers will truly appreciate. Apple Spice Catering provides meals that are individually packaged and personalized with each person’s name. We also go the extra mile for special requests and mark these boxes accordingly.
Order Corporate Catering for Your Next Team-Building Event From Apple Spice Catering
Team-building events are centered around great activities, but elevating your event requires focusing on the finer details — like providing excellent food for the occasion.
At Apple Spice Catering, we have catered to businesses across the U.S. for over 30 years, providing quality corporate catering, box lunches, hot food, sandwiches, breakfasts and an assortment of other meals and treats. You can rely on us for professional corporate catering for team-building events, workshops, celebrations, employee appreciation days and so much more — Apple Spice Catering can help with any work occasion.
We use premium ingredients, so when you order with us, your employees will enjoy a fresh meal delivered right on time. We also cater to special requests and accept last-minute orders. Explore our locations and menus to order your corporate catering, or contact us today for more information.