Team Building Activities Can Take Anything from a Couple of Hours to Several Days

Team building activities can take anything from a couple of hours to several days, depending on what is involved and what is required. It also depends to some degree on whether or not the activities take place indoors of outside. While there are no hard and fast rules, events taking place out of doors tend to take longer than those that happen indoors.

It may be generally assumed that events designed to build up a team spirit should have more long lasting effects and success if they are lengthy and involved. This can be so, but it is not necessarily the case.

The impact of team building activities depends on the quality of the event and how it has been designed. The maximum impact gained can take place in a short duration if the activity or event has been properly designed.

Conversely, a badly designed activity can have little or no effect on overall team building efficiency, no matter how long it is played out. In fact, a badly designed activity will most likely only serve to increasingly confuse the team members if it runs too long.

The real value of team building activities can come from the team itself, and not necessarily from the activities they engage in. This comes about because of the nature of company away days. When a team has to travel to an external centre run by another company they tend to view the occasion as something quite different from their usual work.

In the work place there is a definite hierarchy in place. The lowliest workers know their place. They understand that they have to conform to what is expected of them at all times. Other workers at the various levels within the work place also know their place and abide by the limitations placed on them.

This situation works well, by and large, but it is restrictive for each worker in terms of knowing how the other workers think and work best. That kind of knowledge is essential if a team is required to work at its greatest efficiency level, for only through each team member understanding each other can a team have the fluidity and flexibility of full efficiency.

When a group of workers go on a company away day designed to build team efficiency they start off by being much more relaxed than they would normally be in the work place. The lowliest workers open up more and show their real nature. The bosses also open up more and become more human in nature. The result is that they all start to understand each other's minds better, which results in greater efficiency back in the work place.

The length of team building activities is really not the most important factor in away days for companies. Thee activities should not be too short of course, but greater emphasis should be placed on what each team member takes away with them back to the work place. If that can happen in a few hours, then that is all the time needed. If it takes a few days for that to happen, then that is how long the event should be. The end result should always be viewed as the most important outcome.