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My business is the HR business. I have to advocate for both employers and employees. Team building exercises tend to really help when it comes to meshing these two sides together. There are several resources online for team building advice. If you simply Google the term “free team building exercises” over a million hits come up. Just check out this link! https://www.google.com/search?q=free+team+building+exercises&rlz=1C1SKPL_enUS447&oq=free+team+building+exercises&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.777j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I’ve spent a day or two looking through all the free advice online. While some tips are great, there are a lot of bad ideas out there. Some ideas can even cost a company money in legal fees. That’s why I decided to list below my top three team building tips for employers.

1. Getting to the bottom line. Split the group into debating teams of 3-7 people. (The larger the whole group, the larger the debating teams should be.) Each team’s task is to identify three great new team or department initiatives. Next, host a fun debate over lunch and let each group state their case. Not only will you, as an employer, obtain insight as to your employees and their challenges, your employees will be forced to bond with one another.

2. Puzzle time. Each manager and his/her employees have ten minutes to try and complete a 200 piece puzzle. The puzzle may not be completed but your employees will learn how to help one another with a manager present. This exercise rehearses personal and group accountability.

3. Play “Guess Who.” You have to be a bit careful with this game. Set up some boundaries as to what people can’t discuss before playing. Next, over lunch have the group each write something personal about him or herself on a piece of paper. You collect the folded pieces of paper. Read each one out loud. The group has to guess which employee belongs to the piece of paper. You can create several subtopics of this. The point is to learn something new about everyone and help people better connected with one another.

Leading a team isn’t easy. Knowing your team is.

Britanie Olvera, CEO