Every company at one time or another has tried its hand at some event for team bonding or team building. From holiday parties, to fun virtual games, there are a lot of ways to try to get your employees on the same page and learn to communicate, create and succeed as a team.
But, once the activities are over, how do you know that they actually worked? You may see some collaborative efforts happening more frequently, or there seems to be a spirit of conviviality that maybe you hadn’t noticed much. But, were they the result of the exercise?
In this article, I will go over several ways that you can account for if your team building event was successful.
1. Employee attendance
People show up to work for two main reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that they need to be paid. With bills to pay, not working would cause an obvious problem.
The second is that they have a sense of purpose and want to work to achieve personal and career goals.
When people are not happy with their work, they struggle to get to work on time and regularly. If you noticed that before the exercise that people were often late for work, leaving early, and taking their days off more frequently than usual then you probably were concerned about morale.
Take a look at the reports for employee attendance from before the exercise and at least a couple of months after it. If you see that people are taking less time off and are not trying to take off early, then you can put a notch in the win column for the exercise.
2. Ask the employees
Sometimes you just have to be direct and ask for answers. Your employees may be happy to tell somebody how the event went, for good or for bad.
You can set up a way for your employees to anonymously let you know how they feel the exercise went and if they do actually feel closer to their team members as a result.
Since it is an anonymous questionnaire, be as detailed as possible, and ask very specific questions. This way you can get an accurate idea of how well things actually worked.
This is some of the best data that you will be able to get and is straight from the horse’s mouth.
3. Measure your bottom line
Are you retaining customers better than you had been? Is your employee turnover rate lower? Does your sales team knock it out of the park more consistently these days?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then your bottom line surely is growing. This could be the biggest measure of how successful your team-building exercise was. Increasing your revenue and lowering expenses may not seem like an obvious benefit from a team bonding exercise, but the lessons learned during that time makes a difference.
Happier employees don’t want to leave your company so you save money on employee turnover. Conflicts are more easily resolved so there is less tension at work.
Also, when there is less tension and people are able to actually get the work done, then the increase in productivity almost always results in increased revenue.
