5 Sustainable Team Building Activities for Your Company
In today’s age of technological advances and large corporations, it’s important to realize how our actions have an environmental impact and what steps we can take to ensure our home is taken care of. Earth is the beating heart of our daily lives, much like your team is the beating heart of your company.
When they are taken care of and in the right mindset, they function as a well-oiled machine working towards a common goal. They cultivate your company culture, help each other succeed, and are the driving force behind any great business milestones.
Both your team and our planet need to be taken care of, which is why we have options for sustainable team building activities that you and your team can partake in to help create a better world.
What is Sustainable Team Building?
Think back to the last team building event that was held at your company. How much paper was printed and used? How many custom swag items were left over and eventually thrown away? How much food, time, and energy were spent planning a simple 2-hour event? Don’t get us wrong, team building activities are IMPORTANT – but there are ways to limit and reduce the environmental impact of these activities while still managing to have a fabulous time fostering collaboration.
Simply put, sustainable team building is when you bond with your team outside of work while making a positive environmental impact. It’s easy to do both at the same time and here’s how! All of the team building activities listed below are facilitated through apps on personal devices, which eliminate the need for any paper or plastic products.
Plan an Eco-Friendly Team Activity
We can help you plan an eco-friendly team building event for your large or small group.
1. Sustainability Quest
Sustainability Quest, teams get to explore an event area using a GPS-driven app to “unlock” a variety of fun challenges related to the environment and sustainability. The more points earned during this team building activity, the more impacts made on sustainability efforts across the globe. As a team building company with decades of experience, we understand the importance of selecting a non-profit that aligns with your organization’s goals and objectives. That’s why we partner with an organization called B1G1 that carefully selects projects in 34 different countries to ensure the most efficient giving. B1G1 only works with approved charities/NGOs that meet their unique criteria and all B1G1 projects are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals set by global leaders.
Raise Awareness and Take Action!
If you’re looking to practice corporate social responsibility, Sustainability Quest is a great place to start bringing environmental awareness to your team and to know what charities are out there that need help.This jumpstarts meaningful conversations between coworkers about what causes are near and dear to their hearts. These conversations build better relationships among themselves and lets management know where to donate if they choose to do a charitable team building event next.
2. Conservation Quest
For teams looking to organize a Clean-Up day, we recommend our activity, Conservation Quest. This quest is an app-based team experience that is both fun and educational as it incorporates information about marine life, conservation, and preserving the ocean for future generations. It’s a great beach team building exercise. Participants make a real “splash” as they unlock GPS hotspots set up throughout the beach area while tasked with cleaning up the beach – collecting trash and microplastics, which scientists identify as a major threat to our oceans. Attendees will be shocked to see how much plastic they find on a beach that looks relatively clean once they start to look a little closer.
3. Clean Water Challenge
Wine To Water is another green initiative that is focused on environmental responsibility and clean water in other countries around the world. A lot of fun is “on tap” during this event, which finds participants building a water filter that will be donated to improve the quality of life for someone who does not have access to clean water. Teams will also get to drink in facts about water, the global community, and the sustainability of these filters, which help reduce plastics, while they complete challenges to earn the parts needed to build the filters. In this sustainable team building activity, team members access the game board through an app which eliminates the need for any physical printouts and waste.
Creating a Sustainable Future Together
While putting together water filtration kits is an amazing way to help create a better world, there are much smaller and more feasible things you can do on a daily basis in your office, that don’t have to do with team building activities:
In order to make a workspace more sustainable, businesses can start by implementing simple changes such as reducing paper usage through digital communication and encouraging recycling by placing bins throughout the workspace.
Offices can invest in energy-efficient appliances, use eco-friendly office supplies, and promote a culture of sustainability by educating employees about the importance of reducing their carbon footprint.
By making these conscious efforts, companies can create a greener workplace and inspire their team to contribute positively to the environment both inside and outside the office.
4. Remote-Led Hunts
For groups looking for quick and easy team building activities that don’t require a lot of resources or energy, our Remote-Led Hunts are the perfect way to get outside and explore the area around your meeting space. These scavenger hunts are accessed through a GPS-enabled app on your group’s phone and include various tasks and challenges that will engage your team in some friendly competition while also building camaraderie. Each hunt can be customized to whichever location or city the company has their meeting and all instructions and handouts are provided via email, eliminating the need for any paper materials. Why not take advantage of all of the resources and entertainment already available and partake in a fun-filled scavenger hunt?
Sustainability Through Upcycling
Upcycling is the process of re-using items and resources and utilizing them for multiple purposes, whereas recycling disposes of the item after its one use.
Upcycling is one of the most effective ways to create a sustainable environment in the workplace. Reusing event materials, like banners, props, and tablecloths, for multiple occasions not only cuts down on waste but also lowers the need for new production.
A great way to make team building more sustainable is to upcycle the event materials. For instance, rather than organizing different departments team building activities on separate days, work with a team building company such as Wildly Different who can hold multiple events on the same day utilizing the same materials.
One great example of this is organizing a Canned Goods Carnival event. Teams use non-perishable food items to create carnival games, and take turns playing the different games. Then, they have the chance to vote for their favorite. After the event concludes, teams breakdown their carnival games, and the next group enters the same space to do the activity. Decorating materials, non-perishable food items, and other materials can be reused to make brand-new carnival games. When all groups have done the activity, the non-perishable food items are donated to a local foodbank, and any unused arts and craft materials are also donated!
5. Give Back Game Show
Give Back Game Show puts several twists on the typical game show. Everyone gets to play vs. just a few on stage. And although they win prizes, they don’t get to keep them–they are all donated to a charity of your choosing! Rather than writing answers down on an answer sheet that woud later be thrown away, teams use a game app to submit their answers to challenges, which are presented up on the main stage by the emcee. At the end of the event, the team with the most points is called forward to retrieve their prize. But the real prize is listening to how the donations won will be used to help the community. This is the perfect sustainable team building event to get large groups involved as everything is played through an app and on-screen in the front of the room. A monetary donation to charity at the end of the event is more sustainable than assembling care packages. Non-profits can often get discounts on products and they can focus a monetary donation on what they need most. This eliminates the waste produced in care package assembly events including cardboard boxes, packaging materials, delivery of items from your event space to the non-profit, etc.
Meaningful and Challenging Team Building
The point of team building is to strengthen relationships among your corporate group and help cultivate a comfortable and happy culture in the workplace. Happy employees equal a more successful business, after all!
One way to make team building successful is to make it challenging enough to where participants are engaged and must utilize their strengths and talents. However, to make it even more successful you should make the teambuilding meaningful. If you give your coworkers a reason for teambuilding, be it for a charitable cause or for environmental conservation efforts, they become aware of how important it is to work together toward something larger than your immediate day to day tasks. Once this connection has been made, they’ll bring those skills into their daily work at your company.
After one of our charitable team building events, your team will come to work feeling motivated and excited from the intense competition of the event, and also feeling proud and refreshed after having given back to the community at the same time.
Become a Leader in Sustainability
The events listed above are steps in the right direction towards becoming a leader in sustainable practices and making a positive impact on the world around you. These sustainable teambuilding events are not only great “green” options when planning for events, but are also highly engaging and a blast to participate in. Showing your team that you care about the world, your carbon footprint, climate change, and corporate social responsibility will create awareness and motivation to make the same changes in their lives. After all, a team that is working together towards the same goal can only lead to success!
Wildly Different
