Why is team building important?

Your team spend everyday together, solving the biggest problems you can throw at them, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily get on.

While no one is suggesting that everyone in your office needs to be the best of friends, taking time to forge bonds between employees in a relaxed social setting can result in easier and more efficient working relationships. When you spend time together talking, exploring, creating and relaxing, you see another side to each other’s personalities, and you never know what you might find out about a team member’s abilities or attitude that will help you in a professional context down the line!

What are unique ways to promote team building?

From the classic to the unusual, there are literally hundreds of different ways to get your team bonding. You might already have an occasional team lunch, and even an activity away day or two in the diary, but there are plenty of other ways to introduce an element of teamwork into your daily lives.

Classical team bonding activities tend to fall into one of three categories:

• Challenge: everyone has to work in mini teams to solve a problem or find an innovative solution. This could be something like trying to build the tallest possible tower with nothing but ten balloons and a roll of sellotape.
• Sharing: everyone opens up and expresses something confessional about their wants, desires or needs. You could do this by going round a table and asking everyone to explain the story behind their name.
• Creating: the team works together as a whole or as individuals to make something fun or beautiful. You could set up a mug painting activity, so everyone can add a touch of their own personality to something they use every day (and it’s fun to guess who made each one!).

Increasingly, modern offices are also introducing another category of team building: wellness. Activities that focus on finding and educating your team about balance and self-care demonstrate that you care about their mental and physical health. Conveying an ethos of respect for the mind and body will ultimately let your team know that you expect them to make their own basic needs, and the basic needs of those around them, a priority.

One quick, easy and effective way to do this is buy booking a massage therapist to visit your office, offering 15, 20 or 30 minute chair massages throughout the day. It doesn’t need to be a special occasion, but it’s guaranteed to brighten everyone’s week. It’s more than a luxury – a massage has real, practical benefits that everyone can enjoy.

What are the benefits of massage in the workplace?

Massage is a holistic treatment that has been used effectively for thousands of years to treat a wide range of conditions. Some of the benefits of massage may include:

• Reduced stress
• Deeper sleep
• Improved posture
• Eliminating headaches
• Faster recovery following exercise
• Management of chronic pain

A chair massage concentrates on the head, neck and shoulders, so is perfect for a quick energy boost during the day.

However, if you want to help your employees seriously tackle muscular tension in their back and glutes (which are often the cause of the desk “hunch” seen in computer users), you could think about offering massage membership as a fully or partially funded perk. Even though this encourages your employees to enjoy a longer treatment in their own home, the benefits should permeate through their working life as well. After all: relaxed, calm team members are the building blocks of confident and creative teams!