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Does your PR agency practice team building? Here’s why it’s important

by | Oct 29, 2018 | Public Relations

Whether you run a PR agency yourself or are a team manager in a large PR company, chances are you feel a weight of responsibility to make sure all of the people on your team have high morale and enjoy working together. After all, PR is a dynamic industry where mood and motivation play a big part, and it is also all about people!

You are probably already aware that one of the main approaches in many companies (small and large) to foster good teamwork environments, is to go out and do things together outside of work. Some businesses do this in a more informal, networking inspired way with dinners or drinks out together after work, whereas others choose specific activities and have people go and do them together as organized team-building days. Naturally, the latter approach is harder to arrange, but it is also the most effective in agencies. Here we look at why:

Team building on company time gets more buy-in

Normally, organized team building events take place fully or partly during work time. This is better than evening events like parties and drinks (though these are good to do as well), because you are not asking people to take time out of their personal lives to attend. People don’t have to arrange extra childcare or worry about commuting home late, and they also don’t have to miss out on other regular things they may have planned in the evenings like hobbies or spending time with their family and friends. This means you will get far more attendance, and nobody will resent being asked to go.

Organized activities can be more effective for team building

While you may encourage people at a work dinner or night out to mingle and talk to people they don’t normally interact with so much at work, you can’t really force this, and most people will mostly just hang around with the people they already have good relationships with and know well. With a goal-oriented organized activity, you can naturally have people in a situation where they need to team up with different people and get to know them.

Some activities can have obvious work applications

There are all kinds of things you can do as an organized team building day, and people choose everything from sailing lessons to paintballing, video game tournaments to horse riding. All sorts of activities can foster team work, but some events lend themselves especially well to boosting a team’s skills in an obviously relevant way. A good example is escape rooms such as Escape Room Montgomery, which make your team work together to solve puzzles against the clock as part of a live action game with a fun and exciting story. This clearly maps over to how teams in your agency may need to cooperate efficiently and with trust to meet tight deadlines and resolve issues.

While office parties are a lot of fun, there is a lot of merit to doing other activities during work time to further bolster the team dynamic in your workplace.

James Daniels
James Daniels is a freelance writer, business enthusiast, a bit of a tech buff, and an overall geek. He is also an avid reader, who can while away hours reading and knowing about the latest gadgets and tech, whilst offering views and opinions on these topics.

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