Embracing Practical Empathy as a Key Workplace Skill
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Discover how to engage your employees & get your teams pulling together to achieve their goals through team-building activities.
Team building exercises might get a bad rap, but if you get them right they can do wonders for your employee engagement levels.
Get to grips with the four stages of team building and the five types of team building activities and you’ll know exactly what you need to do to get your teammates pulling together to achieve their goals.
Read on to learn how to use simple team building challenges to boost employee engagement across your business.
Every team goes through four distinct stages. Learning how to recognize which stage your team is at will help you understand how to get the best from them.
The four stages of team building are:
When a team is forming, team members tend to be equally excited to be part of a new team and anxious about how they’re going to fit in and how things are going to go.
You can expect team members to ask a lot of questions at this stage as they try to find their footing and relieve their anxieties.
It’s crucial at this early stage that you focus your team’s energy around:
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Teams always set off with big goals. But sooner or later, they’re going to fall short of their own high expectations. This is the storming stage, and it’s when your team learns how to handle setbacks and conflict together. It’s the team building equivalent of the terrible twos – which every parent is well acquainted with.
When you hit this stage, it’s time to regroup and:
Any team that makes it through the storming stage comes out the other end stronger. Team members become more comfortable with how the team operates and where they fit in it. They feel free to express their “real” thoughts and feelings, and can start to give and receive the kind of constructive criticism that’s going to take your team’s performance to the next level.
Telltale signs your team has shifted into the norming stage are your team members:
You can help encourage this with some well-chosen team building activities (we’ll dive into some examples later).
When a team hits the performing stage, they’re comfortable asking for help when they need it and offering it where it’s needed.
Team members look out for each other, roles become more fluid as members take on responsibilities where they’re most needed, and the whole team is fully engaged. And each team member believes that when the team wins, they win.
As a leader of a team that hits this stage, it’s essential you keep your team going in the right direction with some team bonding activities (more on those in the next section).
The right activities at the right time will fast-track your team through the four stages of team building.
To help you get things note-perfect every time, here’s a rundown of all five types of team building activities – and some examples of each one you can try today:
It’s all about breaking the ice with teams in the forming stage. The faster your teammates get to know each other, the sooner they’ll be comfortable sharing their honest thoughts and feelings with each other.
Here are some classic icebreakers to help get a new team opening up with each other:
Need more icebreaker activity ideas? Check out a list of over 400 icebreaker questions.
Good communication is the cornerstone of any effective team. And when your team hits the storming stage you need to develop effective lines of communications – fast. These simple exercises will help:
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The faster your team can solve the problems they’re inevitably going to face, the more effective they’ll be. These simple activities will help your team learn how to work together to overcome obstacles:
Helping your teammates unlock their creativity is one of the best things you can do for their performance. These exercises will encourage them to think outside the box:
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For a team to reach the performing stage, its members will need to form strong relationships with each other. Encourage that with these activities:
Once you recognize which stage of the team building process your team is at, you can pick the perfect activities to help them reach the next stage as quickly as possible.
Stick to the tips we’ve laid out here to make sure your team bonds as quickly as possible.
Get the foundational knowledge on creating an employee recognition program that boosts employee engagement and helps them feel valued.
Explore GuideYes, at Assembly, security is a top priority. Each quarter, we have ongoing security work that is everyone’s responsibility. While we maintain a strong security posture, it was important for us to prove to our customers that we do everything we claim to do. This led us to pursue a SOC 2 Type II report that would provide evidence of our compliance with industry gold-standard security practice.
There is study after study showing that employee recognition leads to increased engagement. This in return creates an environment where employees are happier and more motivated which increase productivity and reduces voluntary turnover significantly. In order to filled critical roles, companies tend to spend nearly twice the value of an annual salary. Assembly is an investment in your employees that supports your bottom line.
Yes, we will offer contracts for companies with longer-term agreements to help larger customers have more certainty around future costs.
The minimum agreement term is a 12-month subscription.
We do and for FREE! Any new customer needing further support to get started with Assembly to ensure you're set up for success can request custom onboarding support. Improving your employee experience is about much more than just using our amazing software; it’s about transforming your business to create a workplace that people love. That’s much easier to do with the personal support and advice from our passionate people experts.
At the time of redemption (when your employees exchange their points for a paid reward) you'll pay face value. If a reward is a $10 Amazon gift card, your cost will be $10. All paid rewards are billed for on a monthly basis.
The good news is that you don't have to pay for rewards upfront because we only charge you when points are redeemed, not when they're earned.
We offer discounts or educational or charitable organizations. In order to secure a discount, you'll first need to book a demo with a customer support specialist.
For all other organizations, we are willing to consider longer-term agreements in exchange for discounts. To set up annual plans or longer, you will need to book a demo with a customer support specialist.
If you're on a month to month plan, you can go here and cancel anytime. If you're having concerns or need help setting up your account for success, you can always book a demo with a customer support specialist.
If you're on a longer-term custom plan, you'll need to reach out to your customer support specialist to cancel your account or email us at support@joinassembly.com.
Great question! You can customize your core values to match your organization's to boost and track alignment. You can change your currency from the 🏆 emoji (our default) to any emoji of your choice. You can swap our logo for your own. You can also set up company culture rewards such as, "Lunch with the CEO," "Buy a book on us," and so much more!
While we recommend a peer to peer set up where anyone in your organization can give or receive recognition, you can set up Assembly however you want. If you need to limit the people who can give or receive recognition, that's perfectly fine and can be done from your Admin, here.
Assembly connects to the tools your employees use every day to offer an easy, seamless experience with minimal change management.
Assembly has integrations with HCM/HRIS systems like ADP, Google, Office 365, and Slack. We also integrate with communication tools like Slack and Teams so you and your employees can access Assembly wherever they work now.
That depends on the company's permissions set up. That said, over 90% of the employees on Assembly's platform are recognized on a monthly basis. That means nearly every employee across all of our customers are receiving regular recognition from their peers, managers, or leadership. We're extremely proud of this.
They are not required. You can use Assembly without having rewards set up. However, we don't recommend it if you intend to have a high adoption and usage rate. You can always keep the costs down by offering internal culture rewards that are fulfilled by you internally.
No, you can remove allowances from anyone or everyone. It's up to you but we do recommend using points whether they're worth a real dollar value or not. Companies that use points have a much higher engagement rate even if those points don't exchange for real dollars.
Please schedule time with an expert and we will help you to get all your questions answered