8 effective ways to warm up the corporate spirit in the team

Things to remember if you care about corporate spirit

1. Loyalty cannot be enforced by force

You can drop the entire budget and break into a cake to arrange the coolest, funniest and most correct team-building event. Only all efforts will go to waste if your company has problems at the level of basic processes. An opaque system of work and management, salary delays, tyranny of bosses, payment of bonuses not according to merit, but out of acquaintance, illegal dismissals in one day - no team building will fix the impression of this.

All the ways to warm up the team spirit can only increase loyalty, and not create it from scratch. It is made up of many bricks. But the most important thing is the foundation, how comfortable it is for the employee to work in the company, and not to have fun.

2. Caring for people must be sincere

It happens that the employee responsible for the team building is visited by a “great idea” and then the whole team works to implement it. Time, effort, money is wasted. The event is taking place and nobody likes it. But the organizers only think about what kind of ungrateful colleagues they have. Although they should have guessed: in the matter of loyalty, it is not the “great idea” that is more important, but the interests of the employees.

Don't throw a party at a nightclub if your team is full of board game lovers. This is not a way out of your comfort zone that should stimulate people to become more efficient and more productive.

Naturally, it will not work to please absolutely everyone. But you can at least try to catch the right mood. For example, create a survey and offer a choice of several different activities. Let employees vote what they want. At the same time, you will show that their opinion is also worth something.

3. Fun is always bad

When listing the horrors of corporate culture, it is usually called the obligation to go to different holidays. Like, if you do not come, then you will not be paid a bonus. And they may even be fired, because you do not show proper loyalty to the company. It's easy to guess that with love for an organization that is forced to participate in non-work activities, everything is very bad.

An employee should have the right, without any excuses, to refuse activities that have nothing to do with work. This does not say anything about his loyalty. Maybe his kitty is sick and he is embarrassed to tell how worried he is.

4. Religious holidays are a bad idea for team building

Yes, and the relevance of the secular is worth considering in advance. Some reasons, at best, will cause bewilderment among some part of the team, at worst - everything will end in disputes and resentments.

For example, arranging a general diving into an ice-hole for Epiphany is a dubious undertaking from all sides. First, there may be people of different faiths and atheists among you. For them, the January swim looks absurd. Secondly, swimming in icy water is a hobbyist activity, and a healthy one at that.

So it is better to choose more neutral reasons for team building.

5. Regular small activities are better than rare but lush activities

It is right and good to arrange large corporate events several times a year, especially if you have thought everything through properly. Ideally, they should be a kind of pleasant meeting of old acquaintances, which everyone is really looking forward to. If employees do not communicate in any way during the year, then there will be no such effect. That is why it is important to regularly pay attention to team interaction.

How to build a team

1. Make the processes in the company more transparent

Loyalty is not necessarily inhuman patience, readiness to bend, blind faith in the bosses and thoughtless loyalty to the company, which really cannot be implanted without repression. It happens that a person works in an organization because he really believes in what it does, he likes his duties and the team. He does not quit, not because his act will be perceived as a betrayal and will destroy his professional reputation, but because he does not want to. And in a difficult situation, he will even be ready to endure several months without a bonus and work more, just to help his beloved company swim out.

And most often this happens in organizations where there is no repression. This does not change the system of rewards and punishments, but it is transparent. In general, it is clear what to do in order to receive a bonus or a promotion, how much work needs to be done so that there are no complaints against you. It is clear what prospects the company and the employee have with it. Even if the situation gets out of control due to a crisis or a pandemic, it is good to be honest about it.

Be sure to keep the team informed of what is happening in the company. It is imperative to keep people informed and to speak openly with them. Then it is calmer and more comfortable for them to work. Employees feel that they are being honest and open with them, and they begin to trust you even more. Otherwise, there is a risk of losing the loyalty of colleagues once and for all.

Svetlana Popova Head of Accountancy & Finance at Hays recruiting company

You can have periodic meetings with employees, where management tells you how things are. It is important to celebrate imperfections, but even more important is to celebrate common victories together. People should be able to ask questions and talk about problems - suddenly they can be painlessly solved.

In general, as long as the employee feels like a human, and not a cog in a soulless corporate machine, the chance of getting his loyalty is quite high.

2. Make acquaintance with new employees

In tiny offline companies for three people, a new employee gets the opportunity to quickly join the team. If the company is larger, specialists from different departments run the risk of not colliding for several months even in the corridors or in the queue at the cooler and not knowing about each other's existence. As for remote employees, there is a great chance for them and will never intersect with anyone at all, except for their direct leadership.

Therefore, it is important not only to introduce newcomers to the team, but also to give them the opportunity to communicate in an informal setting. Ideally, this is a face-to-face meeting, although video conferencing is better than nothing.

If you have distributed teams in different cities or have remote employees, organize offline meetings of the whole team every 3-6 months. Without communicating with a person in person, without recognizing his temperament and sense of humor, it is difficult to correctly perceive information from him. Only with personal communication are common jokes, tales, slang born - all this unites the team, helping everyone to feel like a part of a single organism.

Marina Malashenko HR Director of OneTwoTrip Travel Planning Service

If all employees work in the same office, and the team is not very large, you can arrange small welcome ‑ parties for each newcomer or group of employees - depending on how often you increase the staff. For example, gathering for pizza or rolls and chatting.

3. Organize an informal communication channel

This point is a logical continuation of the previous one. It is more difficult for people to become closer if they only talk with their direct colleagues and only on work topics. Therefore, it is necessary that they have a platform for informal communication, for example, a general chat.

It is important to connect employees from different departments and cities for communication. Slack helps us with this. Here employees create interest groups, exchange thoughts, impressions, and interesting information. In thematic channels, people often communicate who would never have interacted as part of the work on a task, or even would not have met at all. This brings together and gives the feeling that employees, wherever they are, are always there.

Marina Malashenko

4. Organize non-working activities

Such events help employees to open up from different sides and get to know better. They bring people together who might not otherwise have met. It's good if these are activities of different topics that will help you find like-minded people. Here are some ideas.

Interest club

It could be a book or movie club, a culinary community, a corporate raid in a multiplayer game, whatever.

Use your own talents. You can get ready-made running and poker coaches, band leaders, theater directors, eco-activists, sommeliers and even stargazers. We did this and got a community led by the employees themselves.

Anastasia Zhuravleva PR-director of the QIWI group

Internal employee training

If you have put together a strong team of professionals (why do you need other employees?), They probably have something to share with each other. For example, representatives of one department can tell others about their responsibilities and the basics of their skills. First, it will make the company's activities transparent: it will become clear who is doing what and why. Secondly, the rest of the workers will understand how their work relates to the activities of this department, which is fraught with delays, why it is important to transfer materials this way and not another. Finally, the new knowledge will help individual employees expand their responsibilities and grow horizontally, if not vertically.

Another idea for internal learning is non-core skills that help with motivation, productivity, pep, communication. Probably someone has mastered the secret techniques and is ready to share with the team.

We have an internal ABBYY Academy project in our company. Within its framework, you can tell your colleagues something interesting, share your personal experience. Any employee can propose a topic and make a report, which we broadcast in all offices.

Ivan Yamshchikov AI-evangelist ABBYY

Competitions

Usually, you as a whole team fight to achieve KPIs. But you can additionally fight in a sports or intellectual competition. It is better to compete not with each other, but with third-party opponents. In this case, both victory and loss will unite. When you compete within a company, there is a risk that the relationship between winners and losers may deteriorate for a while.

5. Cover company news

You can periodically send out a newsletter by e-mail, publish a post in a corporate channel or chat. In the text, you summarize what happened over the past period, share indicators, problems, achievements, celebrate the heroes.

6. Arrange flash mobs and challenges

Of course, not every team will be enthusiastic about this idea. But if the employees are young, inclined to small adventures and active on social networks, then you can give it a try. Assign a hashtag to each challenge to watch all participants at once. Award those who distinguished themselves with symbolic prizes.

This approach will not only bring team members together while they complete tasks, but will also work on the HR brand of the company.

Every week in the corporate social network Workplace, we run challenges on different topics. For example, last week was sports. Colleagues from different offices uploaded training videos in their apartment or in the yard. One employee became the "star of the Workplace" by stuffing a roll of toilet paper instead of a soccer ball. This week, colleagues are sharing homemade recipes. For example, an employee from Japan shared a video recipe for Japanese-style borscht, and a colleague from Hungary shared a recipe for a traditional Hungarian Easter cake. Such activities not only allow you to open up from an unexpected side, but also tell others about your cultures and countries.

Ivan Yamshchikov

7. Build a communication system between employees

Even in the coolest and most transparent company, misunderstandings can arise between employees. Moreover, not only between the boss and the subordinate, but also between the line workers. It is important to set up the communication system so that the parties to the conflict have the opportunity to clarify and correct the situation. This requires everyone to know who to contact in this case, and full confidentiality is required.

8. Organize joint trips

Much depends on the budget. Someone takes employees to Milan or Antalya, someone - to the nearest camp site. All options can be quite effective.

A team trip somewhere is primarily an adventure. If it lasts for several days, it allows you to fall out of reality and plunge into the atmosphere of the pioneer camp, which many adored in childhood. At this time, you switch to a completely different context. Your daily affairs and problems recede into the background. And the people with whom you are experiencing this adventure become truly close and dear to you.

Marina Khomich HR Director of Viber in Minsk