The budget would have a significant influence on the venue, food and beverage, as well as duration and type of team building activity. If there are no figures to work on as yet, use the previous years’ budget as a guide. If no such information is available, then plan for something not too ambitious, and adjustments can be made from there.

Next, you have to decide if the team building portion is to be handled in-house or to be outsourced to an external vendor. Of course, if the budget permits, there are many advantages in outsourcing the team building portion.

Firstly, to run a team building event, you would need manpower and chances are, if your colleagues are running the event with you, they cannot participate. External vendors would likely be more experienced in conducting the activities and less likely to make mistakes. The vendor would also provide all the logistics involved, leaving your team and yourself free to participate with all your other colleagues.

team building vendors also bring with them sufficient experience in knowing what works and what doesn’t, so you are not only paying for their services, but also their rich experience.

6. Assessment of Success

“How would you measure the success of the team building session?”

How would the success of the session be measured? Is it considered a success as long as the participants enjoyed themselves, or if the participants got to know at least 3 other colleagues better?

While the effects of team building are generally intangible and the takeaways are somewhat more subtle, measurements of success can be derived from verbal feedback from participants, surveys or observation reports. Observation reports comment on behaviours and attitudes displayed during the activities. Pre and/or post-event surveys track the effectiveness of the team building session based on the same set of questions they organizers wish to enquire about.

7. Location for team building

“Where should we hold the team building session?”

The location or venue would have an effect on the atmosphere of the team building session. The previous six factors mentioned above would have shaped the decision on where to hold the team building.

Other issues relating to location for consideration would be accessibility, function set-up and layout and contingencies for wet weather (if you are having an outdoor session).

With the O.P.T.I.M.A.L. approach developed by änergy, we trust that you would be able to plan for your team building event effectively. If you are running the team building event with your committee internally, be sure to draw up a detailed work plan and budget, with clear responsibilities for every task.

Next, remember that one of the key ingredients of effective team building is rehearsals. You would need to do a site-visit and rehearse the day’s activities, as it would help you trouble-shoot any potential issues, so that improvements can be made on event day and contingency plans are already in-place to tackle any glitches.

We wish you a resoundingly successful team building session!