Team Building Exercise Effectiveness

By Ian Harnett

Are Team Building Exercises Effective?

This research project is an investigation establishing whether team building exercises are an effective medium and the outcomes(positive or negative)that they bring to major blue chip companies.

The author initiates the study with a review of literature firstly exploring definitions and interpretations of 'team building' before moving on to research studies observing its effectiveness.

The literature indicated that secondary data was scarce and the field was lacking in conclusive research.

From the limited data the author found that the majority of the arguments were in favour of team building exercises and recognised it as a positive or necessary step towards creating an effective workforce.

From the information gathered in the literature review the author designed a qualitative semi structured interview to facilitate the collection of data designed to identify the effectiveness of a team building exercise.

Qualitative research was used as it allows interviewees to express themselves and their views providing valuable in depth information.

It was revealed through the analysis of the research findings that team building interventions have a positive effect on performance. Team building is a complex area and is interpreted in different ways, the five managers interviewed all had different ideas as to what it was.

From here the author was able to asses the desired outlooks of the interventions before evaluating the levels of its effectiveness in each exercise.

After concluding the findings from the primary research and links to the secondary data reviewed, the author made recommendations that the planning before the event is a decisive element of team building.

It is evident that team building can have a negative effect but from this study this only occurred when poor planning was evident.