Do your employees need a lift? Here is an fun idea to bring them together

The HR Blog

Your employees maybe starting to feel flat due to the pressures of juggling childcare during school holidays or because we are halfway through August, maybe it is the wet weather, please no more.

Everyone loves a challenge, and they are a great way to build team spirit inside your company. We’re talking about challenges here, not competitions, so the goal is to get everyone across the line not necessarily to crown a winner.

Our top tips for team challenges:

  • Try to make the challenge not work related (i.e. not highest sales);
  • It’s great if it happens during the working day so it becomes a talking point;
  • Find challenges that fit your culture, do some good and are easily measured;
  • Trust is more important than a water tight scoring;
  • It doesn’t have to be companywide, try office or team challenges;
  • Tie the prize in with the challenge if you can;
  • Nominate someone to do the organising (i.e. not you).

Here are a few ideas to get you going:

Drinking Water

Let’s face it, most people could do with drinking a bit more water.  For 30 days, get employees track how many days they drank at least eight glasses of water during the working day. Everyone who achieves it gets a fancy water bottle.

Stay off the coffee

For one week, challenge your team to stay away from the coffee machine. This will be easier for some than others but I suspect most people could do with a bit less coffee. Provide alternatives so there’s no lack of choice and make it clear that you trust everyone to self police. Don’t exclude people that don’t drink coffee. Everyone who achieves it gets a free coffee or alternative and pastry at local coffee shop.

Stay off the chocolate

A variation on the above.

10,000 steps

For one week, employees walk 10,000 steps every day. Most people have a smartphone and there are loads of apps that track steps so all they need to do is present a screen shot to prove it. Encourage them to take a break outside and make it clear that walking meetings are encouraged. The person with the highest number of steps wins a fitness band or a spa treatment (depending on how generous you are feeling). A good way to end the challenge is to add up all the steps to see how far that would have taken you from the office.

Walk from here to xxx

This is a variation on the 10,000 steps where the objective is to set a destination and challenge the team to walk the same distance in a week or month. One company has challenged each employee to walk or run a mile a week, by the summer they would have walked to Rio for the opening ceremony! Remember that it needs to be an achievable distance as the aim is to build the team not defeat it.

Random Acts of Kindness

Create a way to capture every time someone does a random act of kindness for a colleague.  The key here is that the person on the end of the act gets to record it not the giver – e.g. if I think you are being really kind getting me a coffee because I look stressed then that’s in, but if it’s just your round, that’s not. Tally up the result at the end of the month and the person with the most acts logged gets to nominate someone else to receive the prize.

Tackle an event

There are plenty of team based events that you could enter. From go-carting to Tough Mudder to entering a charity walk, a team event can be a great way to get everyone active and working together. Once again the goal must be to get every member of the team across the finish line rather than crown the winner.

The thing to remember is to keep the Team spirit together so these are all great but then as the employer you need to keep it alive in projects and challenges within the workplace.  If you need help or want to know more please contact us on enquiries@HRBusCons.co.uk.

 

 

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