How to Know If Your Team Building Activity Was Successful

You decided to hold a team building event for your employees. So you took charge of the itinerary and the rest of the activities. Everyone attended, enjoyed, and had fun.

Team-building activities, although may cost time and resources, are worthwhile. In fact, it has positive effects on outcomes across the board.

But how do you know whether the said activity you organized was a success or not? Was it useful in teaching your staff to work together better?

More importantly, will it make a positive impact on how they function as a team?

Did it go as planned?

First and foremost, ask yourself or the management team whether or not the event went as expected. Did everyone turn up, completed the activities, interact well with one another, and went home safe?

Asking simple questions like these are crucial.  Not everyone from the human resources and event management team can attest every event has met these basic standards. Check if everything went according to plan.

Conduct a simple quick participants survey

Conducting a simple online survey for everyone to answer is an excellent quantitative measure that you can use to find out what your team thought about the event.

Include close-ended questions such as those that are answerable with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ (so that you can come up with clear percentages as a measure of success) with more open-ended questions (to give the attendees a chance to voice out their thoughts and suggest improvements).

Check if your goals were achieved

What were your motivations behind running a team building activity? Think about what your reasons were in coming up with the event, and why you initiated the entire process. Then, use it as a guide.

Where you successful in hosting events that encourage collaboration among your employees and not competition? Some of your team members can get so focused on winning that they forget what’s the purpose of the activity. Thus, they fail to learn anything out of the experience.

Another thing to note is that many activities exist solely to boost the morale of the team, and it will be relatively easy to see this change after. On the other hand, if there are events whose function is to welcome a new member in the group, one way to know if it went well is to have a brief one-on-one conversation with the new member.

Talk with transparency

Urge everyone to speak, and hear their concerns out. Then, take these suggestions to heart. Talking with transparency can better improve such company events in the future.

A few days after the event, reach out to the participants and conduct a brief coffee meeting about your recent team building activity. Thank them for their time and then ask for constructive feedback. Through this, you’ll gather useful insights on how you’ll plan your next event.

Talk to the organizers

A relay race can be a fun activity to add in team building, yet keep in mind that everyone isn’t going to be thrilled about the idea. Your goal is not to let anyone from the staff feel left out, because it’s the opposite of what you want to happen. Therefore, it’s vital that you consider your employees’ physical and health conditions to decide the right program and set of activities that will work well for everyone.

That’s where organizers come in. Most team building events involve third parties that help you get everything in order. If you’re planning to hold the event somewhere out of town, it is probably wise to consult with these group of experts first and let them suggest an ideal location. Chances are, they’ve done it many times before and can offer suggestions about what activities your employees will enjoy and participate at the same time.

Team building success has to be measured

It might be difficult to measure whether an event is successful or not if you don’t have specific standards. Be sure to record and analyze metrics that are related to team productivity and efficiency before, during and after the event. Check the key performance indicators of your team. Some useful figures to examine are morale, production, and retention.

Think about what’s the worse thing that can happen if things don’t work out- what will be the consequences if the event turned out to be a failure?

Would your employees become worse than before? Would they be returning the four walls of the office looking gloomy though they enjoyed the activity? Would some of your team feel left out?

Give it some time, then observe. If you can’t find all these ‘red flags’ all over the workplace, then your recent team building most probably succeeded in meeting its purpose in building a more effective and solid working dynamics among the workplace.