Employees don't believe in team-building events

A recent survey has found that most British workers don't believe that company team-building events help improve how they work with colleagues.

The study, by Vodafone UK and YouGov, found that British workers would much prefer being able to communicate with each other better at work, rather than being forced to build rapport with their co-workers by sharing adrenaline experiences or performing 'trust' exercises.

While the majority of workers surveyed (66%) have been made to do some form of team-building activity, more than half (54%) don't feel that doing more would help them work better with their colleagues.

Rather than potentially waste money on team-building exercises, respondents with a negative view of team-building suggest that companies should instead focus on providing a more supportive atmosphere at work, enabling better team communication and offering tools for flexible working as their top three priorities.

Respondents are also clear about the negative impacts of not working effectively as a team. The most serious of these were delayed decision-making (named by 31%), unhappy customers through poor response (29%), missing targets because of lack of timely input from colleagues (28%), and making the wrong decisions because of lack of access to the right people and information (28%).

Overall, only 26% of respondents feel that more team-building would help them work more effectively with their colleagues. Age seems to engender a more jaded view of team-building exercises, with only 10% of people aged 55 and over saying they help improve team working, compared with 42% of 18–24 year-olds.

People in Scotland seem to be more positive than those south of the border, with 33% of respondents saying that more team-building events would encourage better team working.