Social Team Building
At the end of the day, something stays with somebody else
What it looks like
A minute of Social: what the group builds, and who it stays with once the day is over.
A team building does the company good and does the people who work there good. The first time somebody asked us for a social one, the honest first thought was: is that even possible? Then something clicked, and a small voice said, if you don’t do it, who will. That’s when we understood what these activities are: collaboration used to bring something useful, and a few smiles, to the people who need them most.
The Social formats are ordinary team building activities, with the same design, the same facilitator and the same debrief, that also produce something useful for somebody else. A vertical garden handed over to a nursery. Bird boxes for migratory birds. A climbing wall built in a school gym. Meals cooked and given to communities in need, or cooked together with people who have little company: older people, people with disabilities.
The psychology is different from every other family, and it’s worth saying precisely. In the other formats the team works to win, or to enjoy itself, or to learn. Here the team works for somebody who isn’t in the room. That shifts the centre of gravity: internal competition drops on its own, and people who in their daily work aren’t much moved by a business result often find a motivation here they didn’t have. The bigger the job, the harder the group commits. The day after, what stays in the office is the thing the group made and the address it went to.
Team building and reporting
There’s a practical reason too, and we aren’t embarrassed about it. An activity of this kind produces evidence you can use in a sustainability report: hours of corporate volunteering, beneficiaries reached, material recovered, non-profit partners involved. It’s the same team building day you were going to run anyway, with one extra line you can report on. The ecological side runs on the same principle: recycled and recyclable materials, cardboard, offcuts of wood and salvage, low emissions, and everything cleared and disposed of properly at the end.
When it makes sense to choose it
It works well if
- the company has sustainability or CSR objectives to meet, and you want the team building budget working on two fronts
- the group is sceptical about team building that gets played: an activity with an external purpose gets past the suspicion more easily
- you want to communicate something externally and be honest about it, because here the material genuinely exists
- there are people who struggle to see the point of what they do every day
It works less well if
- the occasion is purely celebratory and light
- you have less than half a day: the useful part takes real time and can’t be simulated
- there’s no real beneficiary available nearby, since the logistics have to be checked in advance and they don’t always work out. We work with local foundations across the emirates, and which one fits depends on where you are and on what the group is making.
The formats
Social Constructions
Building spaces, equipment and installations that children and young people can use: a gym, a play area, a climbing wall. Real tools, and something safe and lasting at the end of it.
Hydroponic Smart Garden
Growing without soil: sustainable agriculture as a metaphor and as a concrete result.
Vertical Garden
Building a vertical garden to hand over to a nursery or a primary school, with shelves and pots made from recycled materials.
Birdhouse
Building bird boxes out of recycled and rough-and-ready materials, then installing them, to give migratory birds some concrete help. Simple, and surprisingly absorbing.
Eco Paper
Making recycled paper by hand, from the pulp to the finished sheet.
Farm
A slow day on a working farm, among animals, crops and a rhythm nothing like the office.
Recycled Orchestra
Building musical instruments out of waste materials and then playing them together. Social and Music in the same format.
When what surfaces deserves an afterwards
An activity surfaces a great deal about how a team communicates, decides and works together, and sometimes what surfaces deserves more time, more depth and a method. That is where a Team Coaching path can begin: a different road, to be taken only if it is needed, to turn what the day made visible into a new way of working together.
Discover Team Coaching →
Let’s talk about your next team building
You don’t need to have picked a format yet. Tell us what you want your team to take home, how many of you there are and where you’ll be, and we’ll do the rest: within 24 hours you get a considered proposal for your case, with the formats that hold up against your numbers, and what each one leaves the team the day after.
Prefer to talk? +971 50 795 9666 · info @ teambuildingincentive.ae