Having a strong team can mean the difference between success and failure. COVID-19 has most of the workforce working predominantly from home, which can result in a lack of communication, create distance, and potentially even distrust, amongst co-workers. This can affect team coherence. Managers have to make the extra effort to ensure their teams know each other, interact often, and have strong connections.
Why is building a strong team important?
Strong teams are productive and efficient and can achieve a great many things. Working from the office facilitates organic rapport building, while remote working can stunt office bonding and the development of relationships. A study published in the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology in 2016 found that if employees have strong work friendships, the likelihood of them exhibiting innovative behaviour at work is higher.
Making Teams Singapore provides a viable solution to increase interaction amongst your team members with its virtual team building games, which includes Escape Room and Amazing Race. In this blog, we provide a few pointers to help you decide between the two.
Determine your type of team and how it functions
Before deciding on a corporate team building activity, and if you should go with Escape Room or Amazing Race, determine the type of team you have. By knowing the teams and how they function, you are in a better position to determine what form of integration and collaboration activities you should incorporate to help them work more cohesively.
Four types of teams:
- Functional work team – Team members belong to the same functional area and report to a manager. Departments such as Accounting and Maintenance usually have such a structure.
- Cross-functional team – The team is made up of members with different expertise to contribute to a complex project. Boards of Directors or project teams are good examples of such team structure.
- Self-managed team – Such a team doesn’t have a leader but employees work collaboratively to achieve a common goal. Commonly adopted by startups and small businesses, the team would organise their tasks and decision-making amongst themselves.
- Troubleshooting team – The team is created to improve a specific process or product. Members are often sent to different departments to provide solutions.
Decide what you want to achieve with this team activity
Next, decide what are your objectives for wanting to organise a team-building activity. There are a few common goals that you can take reference from:
- Get fellow team members acquainted
- Increase trust and cohesiveness within the team
- Improve soft skills such as motivation, creativity, communications and emotional quotient (EQ)
- Improve morale and engagement amongst employees
With a clear objective in mind, you can then develop a sound team-building plan that not only suits your stakeholders but more accurately eliminates sore points in the team and restores confidence.
Comparing virtual games
With remote work, more companies are choosing virtual games as their preferred team-building option because they are effective, fun and easy to execute since they transcend physical distance. Importantly, there is a wide selection of virtual games designed to match different team-building objectives and types of teams.
Here are two virtual team-building programmes that are favoured by many companies: Escape Room Online and Amazing Race Online.
Virtual Escape Room
The Escape Room team building activity is designed to help your team cultivate communications and organisational skills while getting to know one another. Each participating team would be ‘virtually’ locked in a room and they are required to solve a string of riddles and challenges before they can break free. The winning team is the one that can complete the challenges at the fastest speed. Virtual Escape Room comes with three different options and can be tailored to best match your company’s budget and requirements.
Virtual Amazing Race
Much like the TV show ‘The Amazing Race’, Making Teams’ Amazing Race activity is action-packed and highly experiential. Participants are divided into teams to find different destinations and complete tasks that last between a couple of minutes to an hour. The tasks comprise Cultural Riddles and Cultural Activities that require the team to unravel as a team and eventually complete all challenges at the fastest speed to take the top prize.
Build a strong team with Making Teams
Embracing virtual team-building might be a new concept but many organisations have started investing in virtual team-building due to COVID-19. There is no reason to compromise your team activities just because of physical distance.
Jump on the bandwagon with Making Teams to discover a new and virtual way of team-building. Making Teams has been a dedicated team providing high-quality virtual and onsite building programmes to clients around the world since 2005. Reach out to us to learn more.
