14 Team Building Ideas in a Budget to Strengthen Team Unity

A Gartner report reveals that 94% of executives and 88% of employees agree that a unique company culture is important for a business to be successful. Moreover, to corroborate this study, another Gartner study has revealed that 79% of organizations recognize the need for fostering a sense of belonging in the workforce as it is important or very important for their success over the next 12 to 18 months. Let's take Beefeater Gin as an example. Beefeater Gin, a company that operates in the Food and Agriculture, Consumer Goods market segments, had a challenge regarding team building ideas. 

They wanted to welcome their new graduates in a fun and engaging way to the company. They wanted the new hires to break the ice with each other, meet other employees, and learn all about the Beefeater brand. and what could be better than holding a scavenger hunt as an interactive team building idea to get everyone involved and excited? 

They created a custom-made scavenger hunt for Beefeater Gin that was the perfect icebreaker. New graduates got thrown into fun challenges that had everyone cracking up. But it wasn't just about laughs. Each challenge was designed to teach them all about the Beefeater brand, turning their current knowledge into something they'd never forget, easily letting the new joiners gel with their teammates.

Although the importance of team building in the workplace cannot be overstated, it must be accepted that the right event can foster unity and shared purpose among team members. As a result, it allows them to work more effectively together towards common goals. This blog will share with you team building ideas under budget so that you can throw your next camaraderie session without burning a hole in your pocket.

What is team building? 

Imagine a team where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas, supporting each other, and working towards a common goal. That's the crux of team building. Team building is a crucial aspect of corporate culture that fosters unity, trust, and collaboration among employees. 

It involves organizing activities and events that encourage communication, problem-solving, and mutual understanding among team members. By doing so, team building helps to break down barriers which is essential for a productive and successful work environment.

In short, team building is all about turning a group of colleagues into a high-functioning unit. Ultimately, the right team building idea in place could positively impact: 

• Communication and collaboration skills to allow team members to collaborate more effectively. 
• Employee engagement and morale as it fosters a sense of community and shared purpose. 
• The problem-solving skills in a team setting encourage teammates to adopt creative approaches.  
• Relationships with employees so that employees interact outside of their work roles and build stronger relationships and mutual understanding. 
• The work environment where employees can feel connected and valued as part of a team. This will generate a positive mutual understanding. 

The psychological impact of team building initiatives: 

Team building initiatives have a profound effect on workplace dynamics and individual well-being. When done right, they can transform a group of people into a cohesive, high-performing team. Here’s why they matter: 

• Sense of belonging: Team building activities foster strong connections among team members. This feeling of support, value, and understanding reduces stress and creates a positive work environment. Team building aspires to replicate the camaraderie of a sports team or the unity of a choir within the workplace. 
• Improved communication: Team building exercises encourage open communication. These activities, whether solving puzzles together or participating in trust exercises, enhance how team members express themselves and listen to others. 
• Empathy and understanding: Collaborative activities allow team members to see things from different perspectives. This fosters stronger bonds and better working relationships. By understanding your colleagues' viewpoints, conflicts decrease, and cooperation increases. 
• Enhanced problem-solving skills: Team building often involves solving challenges. These exercises improve problem-solving abilities and encourage creative thinking. Additionally, facing obstacles together helps you learn to rely on each other's strengths. 
• Increased trust: Trust is essential for effective teamwork. Activities designed to build trust, such as trust falls or blindfolded obstacle courses, can strengthen trust among team members. When trust is present, collaboration becomes smoother, and innovation flourishes. 
• Improved mental well-being: Taking breaks for team-building activities refreshes the mind and reduces stress. This promotes overall well-being and contributes to a positive work environment. Happy teams are ultimately more productive teams. 

Let us quantify the psychological impact of team-building! 

Now that the impact of the team building events has been quantified, let us know the effective ways to set up the team-building program. 

How to set up a team-building program? 

Building a strong and collaborative team takes effort, and well-designed team-building programs can be a powerful tool to achieve that goal. Here's a breakdown of the key steps involved in setting up an effective program: 

1.  Understand your team's needs 

• Assess team development: Before diving into activities, take a step back to understand your team's current stage. Are they a newly formed group still getting acquainted, or a seasoned team facing challenges in communication or collaboration? Identifying their developmental stage will help tailor the program to address their specific needs. 
• Establish clear goals:  With a clear understanding of your team's needs, set specific and measurable objectives for the program.  Do you aim to improve communication skills, and problem-solving abilities, or simply strengthen team spirit?  Clearly defined goals will guide your activity selection and measure the program's success.

2.  Designing the program structure 

• Time commitment:  Consider the time constraints of your team and the complexity of your goals. A half-day program might be suitable for introductory team building, while a multi-day retreat could be ideal for in-depth skill development. 
• Activity selection:  Choose activities that are engaging, promote interaction, and directly address your established goals. Consider a mix of creative problem-solving exercises, collaborative games, or workshops led by industry experts. 

3.  Planning and logistics 

• Budgeting:  Allocate a realistic budget for the program, considering venue rental, activity costs, materials, and potentially even refreshments. 
• Venue selection:  Choose a suitable location that fosters the desired atmosphere. Consider an off-site venue for a change of scenery or leverage a meeting space within your office for smaller programs. 
• Team formation:  Decide on how to form teams.  Will they be based on existing departments, randomly mixed, or strategically chosen to encourage interaction among less familiar colleagues? 
• Schedule development:  Create a clear agenda outlining the program's flow, including activity timings, breaks, and dedicated time for discussions or presentations.

4.  Implementation phase 

• Preparation:  Gather all necessary materials, equipment, and resources well in advance.  Ensure the venue is booked and any facilitators are confirmed. 
• Program execution:  Facilitate the program according to the plan, maintaining a positive and engaging atmosphere. Be prepared to adapt the schedule slightly if needed to ensure everyone is participating and enjoying the activities. 
• Wrap-up and takeaways:  Summarize the key learnings and discussions from the program. Encourage team members to reflect on their takeaways and how they can be applied in their daily work. 

5.  Evaluation and follow-up 

• Feedback collection:  Gather feedback from participants through surveys or discussions. This feedback will be crucial in understanding the program's effectiveness and identifying areas for improvement. 
• Action planning:  Based on the feedback received, develop an action plan to address any shortcomings identified. This could involve additional training sessions, team discussions, or even incorporating successful activities into regular team meetings. 

To plan the team building program, and to help it run effectively, you can integrate Empuls. It fosters strong teams by providing a space for connection and engagement among employees, a key factor in building effective units. 

Empuls also empowers HR leaders to gauge employee morale and address any issues, promoting a culture where everyone feels valued and motivated to contribute to the organization's goals. Now that we have gotten accustomed to setting up the team building program, let us check 14 low-budget initiatives that you can run in your organization. 

14 low budget team-building ideas: 

 14 low budget team building ideas are as follows.

3 Creative activities 

Encourage creativity and teamwork by organizing a creative challenge where team members work together to solve a problem or complete a task using their creativity and resourcefulness. Some exciting creative challenges you can adopt are:

• Canvas painting: Provide pre-drawn canvases, paints, and brushes for each team member to create colorful masterpieces that can be displayed together as a mural in the office, promoting collaboration and creativity. 
• Culinary challenge: Divide the team into smaller groups, assign a food category, and challenge them to create delicious dishes using a specific ingredient or shape, promoting creativity and teamwork. 
• SCAMPER challenge: This technique uses verbs to push existing ideas in new directions. Give the team a product or concept and ask them to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to Other Uses, Eliminate, and Rearrange it. 

2 Virtual team activities 

Engage remote team members with virtual team-building activities such as online quizzes, virtual escape rooms, or virtual team challenges to promote collaboration and teamwork across distances.

• Company Trivia Challenge: Organize a company trivia challenge to test your team's knowledge about the company, its history, values, and goals. This can be a fun and engaging way to promote team bonding. 

• Business trivia: Imagine holding a trivia night, but instead, it would be based on the field you are from. It is a refreshing idea where people from the same professional background can come together and discuss problems, share strategies and ideas to overcome the issues, and more. 

2 Engaging team building activities 

• Escape room challenge: Create a DIY escape room challenge where team members have to work together to solve puzzles and riddles to "escape." This can promote problem-solving skills and teamwork. 

• Board game tournament: Host a board game tournament where team members can relax, have fun, and engage in friendly competition. Board games can help improve communication and teamwork skills. 

6 Communication & trust building activities 

Organize activities focused on improving communication skills and building trust among team members. This can include role-playing exercises, trust falls, or group problem-solving tasks. Some communicational and trust building activities are as follows:

• Online scavenger hunt: Participants work together virtually to find clues and complete challenges online.
• Collaborative brainstorming: Use online whiteboards to brainstorm ideas together, encouraging communication and participation from everyone. 
• Collaborative story building: The team starts a story sentence by sentence, each person adding a new element. This fosters creativity and listening skills. 
• Role-playing exercises:  Simulate real-world scenarios relevant to your team's work. This allows for practicing communication skills and building trust in a safe environment.
• Blindfolded challenge: Enhance communication and trust among team members by organizing blindfolded challenges where one team member is blindfolded and guided by their teammates to complete a task.
• Icebreakers & getting to know you: Start team meetings or gatherings with icebreaker activities to help team members get to know each other better and feel more comfortable working together. 

These low-budget team-building ideas can be tailored to suit your team's preferences and goals, fostering a positive and cohesive work environment. Let’s go through 2 case studies to understand the impact corporate team building ideas have on employees and the overall success of the organization.  

Case studies

Following are the two case studies to showcase the significance of placing team building ideas. 

1. Principia Substantiate Emotional Connection within The Team Using Sessions on ‘Emotional Intelligence’  

Establishing a strong company culture can be difficult for any organization. However, the task becomes particularly challenging when employees are geographically dispersed. Principia, a research and consulting firm with a geographically remote workforce of approximately 20 employees and contractors, faced the same issue.  

“We all work remotely, and we’re spread out all over,” says Brooke Cowell, VP of Marketing at Principia.

Challenges

With most of its workforce working remotely, it becomes a challenging task to keep them engaged. 

“It’s difficult to get to know each other better as individuals since we’re not physically all located in one place. It makes it hard for us to understand and describe who we are, from a cultural perspective,” comments Lou Rossi, Managing Partner at Principia.  

Although Principia adopted evolving communication technologies, there remained a gap in engagement as the company continued to rapidly grow. 

“We’ve reshaped our team through the hiring process and the company has almost doubled in size over the last year. There are enough of us now that we need to make sure we are aligned and on the same page. And doing everything remotely made that even more challenging," commented Rossi.  

The challenges they faced included: 

• Engaging 20 remote employees and contractors 
• Identifying better and reflective ways of working together 
• Wanting to define and build a stronger company culture 

“We wanted to bring someone in from the outside, who could help us get to know each other better, and help us work together on a more personal level. We wanted someone who would be able to identify better ways for us to work together.” said Brooke Cowell, VP of Marketing at Principia. So, they collaborated with a specialist.

Solution

The team came up with a session titled "Emotional Intelligence." This session aimed to enhance both interpersonal relationships within the team and individual self-awareness. The interactive session not only strengthened team bonds but also got valuable insights and practical takeaways. Their tactics included: 

• Lyndon Friesen, Skill Development Facilitator, leading an interactive training session on Emotional Intelligence 
• Getting provided with key takeaways and tactical insights

Result

The training has had an impact on the team’s day-to-day interactions which resulted in:

• Employees align their working style with a focus on company culture 
• Emotional awareness and positive day-to-day interactions between employees.

2. Microsoft harnesses accountability and individual growth in the team with ‘five behaviors of a cohesive team’ program

A successful team environment relies on three key elements: trust, collaboration, and accountability.  This was the challenge facing Darci Kleindl when she assumed the role of General Manager for Sales Excellence and Enablement at Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS). Ms. Kleindl was entrusted with leading a global team of customer support managers within a tight timeframe for a prestigious Fortune 100 company.

This team supported a diverse clientele including engineers, marketing organizations, consultants, and external customers. The group worked independently before Ms. Kleindl started. When she arrived, there was a big change.  

The company combined its CRM work with the overall strategy, making its workload much heavier. Even though it was difficult, Ms. Kleindl had experience leading groups through changes. She planned a program to improve teamwork and create a good work environment for her team. 

Solution

Darci Kleindl wanted to truly improve her team, not just with a one-time training session. She wanted them to trust each other, work together well, and be responsible. 

To do this, she partnered with a teamwork expert who suggested a program called "The Five Behaviors." This program helps teams understand what they're good at as a team and where they can improve. 

Kleindl and the expert then built a longer program based on "The Five Behaviors." This program helped the team communicate better, understand their roles, and become better leaders. Kleindl wanted everyone to understand themselves and how they work with others. 

So, a team-building session was held for a new group of colleagues. The session aimed to build trust and understanding among the team members.  Activities were designed to help them learn about each other's backgrounds and perspectives. They also discussed their shared values and goals for the team and the company. This foundation of trust and communication allowed the team to move forward effectively.

Result

This program has had a significant and positive impact on the MBS group, according to Ms. Kleindl. Namely, she noticed: 

• The team has expanded its network 
• Implemented systems to improve productivity 
• Streamlined their planning process and increased individual engagement through one-on-one interactions. 
• A clear understanding of individual and team responsibilities. 

The Five Behaviours framework provided a strong foundation for further development. Importantly, the program's success stemmed from making individuals feel valued. The MBS group is now recognized for fostering a commendable culture built on trust, collaboration, and accountability. 

Kleindl remarked, “I think this team has increased in visibility substantially as far as what they do and the impact. Our relationship network has grown, systems have been put in place to help with productivity, our planning is more succinct, and the team is connecting more one-on-one with people to explain their roles.” 

Conclusion 

Corporate team building activities are crucial for fostering a successful and cohesive work environment. Through team-building exercises, colleagues can discover hidden talents and strengths in each other. If done right, corporate team building initiatives can help employees at work: 

• Talk better together 
• Work together more smoothly 
• Trust each other more 
• Enjoy work more 
• Learn each other's strengths and weaknesses. 

So, motivate your employees and keep them engaged in the workplace for overall success of the organization.