Hilary Briggs, London chairman of the Academy of Chief Executives, explains why teambuilding exercises can backfire when times are tough.

Hilary Briggs, London chairman of the Academy of Chief Executives, explains why teambuilding exercises can backfire when times are tough.

If you’re experiencing lower sales, the need for cost reductions and a slimmed-down workforce, then it’s likely that team morale is low and staff are feeling disenchanted, overworked and stressed. The obvious knee-jerk reaction is to “do something” to fix it.

The solution typically suggested is some form of big, rousing “team” event with an upbeat tone, or an off-site teambuilding event to boost morale and get everyone working together properly. But in my experience, companies that try these events during tough times often find them counterproductive.

Rather than rallying staff to the cause, many big team building events only underline the problems they are trying to smooth over. If cash is tight, a lavish event is seen as hypocritical. If fewer people are doing the same amount of work, taking a day out just means they’ll have to toil even harder when they get back to the office.

It’s not that off-site teambuilding events are bad – they can be very powerful and deliver great results. However the timing needs to be right, and the right time is not during a recession.

So if big team building events are not the answer – what is?

In times of trouble, it might be better to start with a smaller-scale, more pragmatic approach to achieve improvements in the short term, rather than a large flashy teambuilding exercise. This can lay the foundations for more intensive teambuilding in the future. I’d suggest the following:

1) Acknowledge the overwork and stress people are going through, and take responsibility for it. If showing empathy comes with difficulty – tackle your emotional intelligence first! Staff need to know you understand.

2) Organise focused sessions on specific problems related to work or opportunities to improve productivity. Make sure these sessions are a maximum of 45 minutes each. Use an external facilitator if required – but if your line managers are not capable of leading the group, maybe you kept the wrong people… Ensure clear actions come out of the session and make team members accountable for following up on the decisions taken. Make the actions simple: I worked with the mantra “five minutes a day to make tomorrow better” for three months – and accepted the reality that some days it wouldn’t happen. Even something as small as this can make a considerable difference.

3) Set a clear timescale. In my experience 100 days is a time frame that is long enough for significant improvement, but not so long that people think it’ll never happen. Prioritise actions that can be taken within that period. You can come back and revisit longer term actions later. The key is to get started and then keep taking steps towards that goal.

4) Create a powerful vision of what things could be like. Communicate this vision and help the rest of the team see it, and feel it too. People need hope and something positive to hang on to during a transition.

5) Review how it’s going and adjust. It’s important to get results and then build on these. As long as it’s done in an objective way and focused on facts, regular reviews of progress, including open discussion of obstacles and new challenges, forms a key part of building a high performance culture.

This approach may be less flashy than some prestigious feel-good team-building event, but it will help your people to feel less stressed and become more engaged again. And it’ll get you bottom line results as well.

Hilary Briggs is chairman of the Central London group at the Academy of Chief Executives. She is the former managing director of Laird Group’s car body sealing division.