Teamwork makes the dream work, right? That’s what they say, anyway. But how many companies actually put team building at the forefront of their culture and values? 37% of workers consider employee teamwork, team building, and collaboration to be very important. So much so that it can affect how long employees stay with a company. So what are employers doing to support their teams, and foster cross-departmental relationships and collaboration?
Many companies have attempted to maintain culture and team building during the pandemic through virtual happy hours, events, and snack boxes mailed to employees’ homes. And while those efforts didn’t go unnoticed, it’s just not quite the same as water cooler talk, in-office happy hours, or huddles in the conference room.
As teams gear up to return to the office after a nearly two year stretch of remote work, team building is extremely important. "There's going to be such a reversion to trying to reconnect," Mark Hoplamazian, CEO of Hyatt Hotels Corp said of returning to the office at Fortune's Reimagine Work Summit. Any professional will agree that that personal connection is an integral part of culture, collaboration, and workforce function, so restoring in-person teamwork should be top of mind for many companies as offices start to open.
The first step to nailing team building— both virtually and not— is to create training, onboarding, and group presentations that inspire instead of bore. Consider the following five team building presentation ideas for a more enjoyable presentation experience for all parties involved.
Open with a bold statistic
You’ve heard us talk about introductions before, and that’s because they can make or break your entire presentation in less than 30 seconds. If you’re really looking to rev up your team and inspire them, start the team building presentation with a bold quote or a motivating statistic from your business. This can be an impressive metric or a positive customer quote that shows their efforts are paying off, but it should be something that grabs the team’s focus and makes them want to pay attention to the slides that will follow.
Hide easter eggs throughout the deck
How can you be sure the team is actually paying attention to your presentation and not pondering what they might eat for dinner? This is a challenge presenters will face regardless of whether you’re giving an in-person or a remote team building presentation. Our recommendation: hide easter eggs throughout the deck. These could be hidden words, a specific icon included a certain number of times throughout the presentation, or funny photos. Use said easter eggs as an incentive to your team to pay attention to the deck, and offer prizes to whoever can find the most hidden eggs throughout the course of the team building presentation.
Utilize dynamic visuals and animations
The fastest way to lose your audience to boredom? Loads of data and text that’s impossible to digest. Instead, make sure you’re including plenty of beautiful visuals— photos, video, or icons— and utilizing dynamic animations to bring your slides to life. Using visuals allows you to say more with less. And it’s no secret that over half of people are visual learners, so by simply opting for photos or icons you’re a lot more likely to have your team building presentation resonate with your audience.
Get them involved
Whether you choose to include icebreakers mid-deck, or leave time for discussion at the end, don’t forget to involve the team. You can involve them in a variety of ways including gamifying the presentation with polls, quizzes, or questions, asking them to each create their own slide to include, or bringing them into the conversation with their own ideas. Whichever method you decide to run with, make sure your deck reflects that. By involving your colleagues in the team building presentation it will make them feel seen and valued, which is a surefire way to inspire them.
Start inspired with a template
As things start to return to normal, there’s an increased pressure to foster team building. But when it comes to your presentation there’s no need to stress—Beautiful.ai can handle the heavy lifting so that you can focus on your team building strategy, onboarding, or training. With countless pre-built presentation and slide templates in our inspiration gallery you can plug and play without having to start from scratch. Focus on your team, we’ll do the rest.
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