Saturday, June 2, 2007

Team Building : offsite






  • lunch
  • camping
  • golf
  • baseball game
  • caberet dinner
  • wine parties
  • cycling / singletrack
  • tennis
  • frisbee
  • softball / kickball

Adopt-a-student! Sponsoring a local business program can develop into a wonderful partnership with 'fresh blood.' Invite the youth to company events or team building. They will learn emotional intelligence and discover the team's culture. Although the expense is catorgorized into recruiting expenses, you are providing double duty as a stimulant and motivator to the existing workforce.

These events help teams grow through informal mentoring and even reverse mentoring. Reverse mentoring is when senior employees learn the latest technologies, teachings, and culture from interns. Employees develop their mind and bodies when they discover new energy, learn young phrases, and develop playful competition.

Simultaneously teams select new team members over time and students self-select into the company's culture.

This HR practice will yield excellent employees with reduced turnover in an informal environment. You could never legally discover potential employee's fit, problem-solving, and social skills like this in an interview!

Have you tried anything like this? Did you let students pick/plan the outings?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This sounds like a great idea. It is ironic, but the larger the company (and associated financial resources), the more difficult it becomes to fund this type activities. Too much red tape involved to even dream of getting approval for spending $$ on non-employee/non-job candidate individuals. For example, one of my team members in a multi-contractor organization told me it took all year to get his company to spend $30 per employee for a team bonding event for people who work outside the main campus.

However, smaller companies with localized approval processes could really take advantage of this idea - try it before you buy it :-)

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