Team Building

I talk about workplace team building and employee engagement so much on this blog that I'd be remiss if I didn't provide some practical, organizational examples of how you can approach it in a way that some of the most innovative small organizations – our Top Small Workplace and Best Boss winners and finalists, among others – are doing so. Here then are 20 team building strategies culled from our website that you might consider implementing this year:

Look for complements vs. redundancies when hiring. If you are CEO of a small organization such as a startup, look for managers who have different approaches than yours.
Encourage and incentivize cross training wherever possible.
Bring your teams together for meetings whose only goal is to brainstorm ways to work better together. Sales and marketing is a typical place to start. See 2004 Best Boss finalist Fieldglass, Inc.
Form team member committees and charge them with developing and enforcing company-wide policies.
The small team approach to client management can pay big dividends. Just ask our 2006 Best Boss honoree Rackspace Managed Hosting and 2007 and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist rbb Public Relations.
Bring in top-notch, locally available coaches on topics that will reinforce your culture and the service you want employees to demonstrate for your customers. The key is to have them become a regular sight in your workplace and be affable enough that employees come to respect them. See 2006 Best Boss winner Headsets.com.
Engage in daily, weekly, or monthly huddles. See 2005 Best Boss winner 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist Tasty Catering.
Task-based teams – as opposed to teams focused on workplace "ideals" such as "green teams" – can attack problems more directly. See 2006 Best Boss winner Seventh Generation.
In this economy, a great task to assign one or more teams is improving operational efficiency. Bigelow Tea did this several years ago with their shipping provider; employee input saved the company around $80,000 per year.
Hold quarterly lunches with your teams off site, hosted by your president or CEO.
Hold all-staff meetings every 1-2 months. These can feature a mix of team building exercises, sales briefings, and updates on HR benefits and policies. Encourage any and all questions; if leadership cannot or does not wish to answer them in a large-group setting, follow up with employees individually.
Many progressive small firms are designing their workspaces with open floor plans and no offices. This encourages impromptu sessions that foster workplace team building. See 2008 Top Small Workplaces winner Jump Associates and finalist Edmunds.com, Inc.
Create opportunities for senior employees to mentor junior associates (helps lower turnover of the latter). See 2008 Top Small Workplaces winner Integrated Project Management Company, Inc., and finalist Forum One Communications.
Do you manufacture your product(s)? Create a team to research and implement lean practices. Benefits include cost savings and improved customer attraction and retention. See 2004 Best Boss winner Berner International Corp. and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist HUI.
Give teams accountability, including in revenue generation, quality control, and hiring and firing decisions. See HUI.
Is your office in a beautiful environment? Do you espouse environmental values or have an eco-friendly product or service focus? Encourage team hikes over lunch. See 2007 and 2008 Top Small Workplaces finalist PRIZIM Inc.
Consider giving out performance bonuses on a team instead of an individual basis, based on which add the most value to clients. See rbb Public Relations.
Think about choosing a metaphor to instill workplace team building at a cultural level in a way that both new and seasoned employees can identify. For example, manufacturer IRMCO uses the wolf pack – "the only perfect team in nature."
Is your firm comfortably profitable and looking to give back? Consider implementing a foundation or project that reflects your business. The eyewear manufacturer and distributor Luxottica Group, for example, set up a foundation called Give the Gift of Sight that uses the company's existing workforce as volunteers who travel internationally to screen and prescribe recycled frames and lenses to those in poor and underserved areas.
Extend the team mentality to your customers, especially your best ones. Check in with them often on how you can deliver more and better value-adds to them. The goal is to get them to think of your business as an extension of theirs. See 2007 Top Small Workplaces winner Corporate Ink.