Culture in an organization has a big impact of its operations. For example, a company with a toxic culture more often has employees who are disloyal, have low employee engagement, poor performance, and low employee retention. Conversely, organizations that have a healthy workplace culture are good in communication, solid team, strong leadership, high retention rates, and employees who are full of enthusiasm and motivation. You need to learn about culture building activities to get a positive impact on your organization.
Are you ready to create a positive culture work environment and strengthen your team workforce? SMEbrother has prepared 12 creative fun culture building activities to make your team more engaged and connected.
What are culture building activities?
These are activities that focus on changing the work environment by carrying out ideas and games that promote actions, values, and beliefs in an organization. The goal of culture building is to change the point of view of all members through these activities. If team building focuses more on a group of people or a specific department, while culture building might include all employees in an organization.
After the organization carries out culture building, it is hoped that employees can learn more about each other, connect casually, build trust, while having some fun doing it. Culture building often tests the members' problem solving skills, critical thinking, collaboration, and something they have never done before.
What makes organizational culture successful?
It depends on how employees do it and maintain a positive culture so that it stays like that for a long time. Employees who already have motivation and enthusiasm will be better able to maintain a strong organizational culture, because it provides benefits to themselves.
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Some of the benefits are enhanced trust, cooperation, efficient decision making, and fewer disagreements. If every employee can maintain the culture and share understanding among others, then the organizational culture can be considered successful and will last an indefinite period of time.
12 unique culture building activities
Now, lets get into the culture building games and ideas to change the work environment to be more positive and bring many benefits to the organization.
- Weekend getaway
Weekend getaways are one activity that is highly underrated, but effective. Every employee needs to refresh and regroup with things that are not related to work. You can plan some fun activities that all employees can do for a fun and relaxing weekend. Whether inviting employees to national parks, museum tours, swimming pools, or any place to go off the grid and giving employees time to get closer together.
- A company-paid lunch
Having a lunch might just be one of the simple activities that everyone does. But it would be more interesting if the office paid for the employees' lunch, especially if the restaurant was the joint choice of the employees. Get your employees out of the office to have lunch while giving them time to chat and share about their life outside the job. Apart from employees getting free food, they can also get closer to each other, even some people who are not that close at the office will be able to get to know each other better.
- Company award ceremony
Reward is one thing that has a positive impact on employees. Employee's performance must be recognized by making an award ceremony for an annual event. This is a great way to highlight top performers and showcase their achievements and talents to the entire company members. Let the top performers give a speech and get appropriate rewards such as field trips, cash bonuses, or other useful items.
- 5 minute team bonding
Create a new culture in the organization for the first 5 minutes before the meeting or the last 5 minutes before break time to do some team bonding games. You can change the whole team's mindset to do team bonding at every meeting or after the meeting, because those 5 minutes are more often used for greetings, sidebar chats, or casual conversations. By allocating those same minutes for team bonding, the organization will benefit more because it has a positive effect on the whole team.
- Brainstorming session
Sometimes in an organization, only certain people convey their ideas or their perspective on what is needed or needs to be improved. But brainstorming sessions provide an opportunity for all employees to share their perspective and experience, and let the ideas flow. You can encourage some employees who are more often silent during meetings, and provide equal opportunities for each employee to be heard for their opinions and ideas.
This can increase the trust of every employee, because they feel their voice can also have a positive impact on the organization's progress.
- Game night
Game nights are culture building opportunities that can bring fun and joy to the organization. You can determine the right time for game night, such as before the weekend, or when the company will work on a tough project. Before the team finishes the project, you can loosen their mind by doing something fun like trivia, scavenger hunt, escape room, or other game ideas that can lift their spirits and motivate them to complete the project as expected. Game nights are not only for family and friends, but also for co-workers.
- Personal development session
Improving knowledge and skills is one of the important things for the organization. You can organize personal development sessions by inviting experts to study with employees, or by involving employees in online courses. You will never lose on investing by increasing the knowledge of each employee, because each employee has the opportunity to improve their behaviors and skill sets. Besides, employees will feel cared for because the organization also cares about their development and can have a great impact on the company's progress.
- Icebreaker games
Every office activity will always be draining energy and mind. Icebreaker games are a culture building suitable for reducing stress with both fun and functional. Icebreaker games are designed for simple games, but a great tool for improving relationships between team members. Even beginners will love doing icebreaker games, because they don't need special understanding or any experience to play.
- A fitness competition
Besides competing in terms of work, employees can also compete in fitness competitions. Fitness competitions provide opportunities for employees to exercise while doing it together with coworkers, encouraging healthier habits, helping them to stay on track, and being a natural stress reliever. Some competitions that are fun to do are cycling, marathon, or relay running.
- Summer activities
First, adjust everyone's deadlines to adjust each employee's schedule, and it is hoped that everyone can attend summer activities. You can schedule picnics, give employees a Friday off, or other fun summer activities like swimming or fishing. Doing some summer activities gives the employee the opportunity to absorb more Vitamin D while at work, employees sit in chairs and almost never get the benefit of the sun in the morning.
- Donate to a local charity
Local charities are one of the positive activities that can foster a good culture in an organization. There are countless ways to make a great impact on your area, from families in need, homeless pets, and many more that are something you can do to help those in need. This is one of the fun culture building activities, because it increases coworker connections, a sense of caring for others, and the satisfaction of giving something to others.
- Casual dress days
Being at work can be more fun when you can wear casual gear. For some reason, wearing whatever employee's like while sitting in the same chair just feels relaxing and also motivating. Employees can relax and enjoy being themselves, making them more productive and thinking of something creative for their work. Giving freedom to employees about what they wear in certain days can be a good culture for the organization.
That's all about culture building activities from SMEbrother. You can visit the SMEbrother website for important information regarding small to medium-sized businesses, ranging from finances, motivation, to anything for your business development.
