Service for Team Building

One of my favorite ways to do team building is through service. There are so many different opportunities to serve other people in this world. But, when I’m recommending service for your work team, I’m not necessarily referring to big major trips where you travel halfway around the world to help a bunch of children in an orphanage. There are service opportunities that you can do for people that are in your company. Not to mention lots of opportunities to do service for people in your community.

Here are some suggestions around how to organize a successful team building service projects:

1. Find two people on the team to be the leaders of the project.
2. Provide a reasonable budget for doing the service. It may not cost you anything to do the actual service work, but it will be nice to have lunch available for your employees, or maybe to purchase t-shirts for everyone to wear while they’re doing the service project.
3. Make sure that you do the service project on a normal work day. Nothing will kill morale more than doing a mandatory service project on employees personal time. Unless you can invite their families and include their families in the service project, I highly recommend that you do this during regular business hours.
4. Ensure that the people who are heading up the projects have a clear understanding of what it is you’re trying to accomplish in the service project.
5. During the service project, encourage people to work together and get to know each other more. Especially look for opportunities to get employees to work together who are not very close-knit. Service is a wonderful way to bring people together and to feel good about each other. Isn’t that the purpose of doing team building activity??
6. After the service project, take an opportunity to talk with the group about how their experience was doing the service. Be careful as a manager to not talk over the employees, rather let them point out the things about the service experience that made a difference for them and also help them to build better ties with their co-workers.

All-in-all your goal with a service team building project is to do good in the community and do good with your team members. Don’t stress having a big huge elaborate service project because then you get too overwhelmed with all the details. Instead look for an opportunity to do something simple yet helpful and will give a lot of people on your team an opportunity to contribute.

How have you done service in your company?