Team Building & Team Development

Today's business thinking is more strategic and certainly has to look for returns on the investment. That is why The BCF Group's team building programmes are bespoke and built to your requirements through research, understanding your business and, most importantly, what results and achievements you are looking to get out of the programme.

Once "what success looks like" has been established, we create tasks and activities that will test your leadership, problem solving, communication and teamwork skills. When the tasks have been completed, the learning - both practical and theory - is debriefed to the group as well as how it will translate back in your business. Not only are our events great fun, but they provide participants with learning points they can act upon to improve or enhance the working practices/environment.

A successful company is always made up of successful teams. Teams that can work autonomously with a clearly defined set of goals, roles, vision, responsibility and culture will always reach for and achieve far greater success than a team that works just as a group of individuals.

Our team building solutions are individually built and geared towards teams at any level within an organisation, providing an independent and objective perspective to promote a common purpose such as the creation of a 'high performance team'.

Out With The Old...

• Traditionally, team building events have been restricted to certain levels of management where they head off site for a bit of archery, quad biking and paintballing or something along those lines. Then over some coffee and cocktails, business plans and more efficient ways to work are casually discussed.
• Whilst being out having fun instead of being at work may improve an individual person's mood, the effect will only be short-term, and will not go far in creating permanent and cohesive teams who are able to overcome challenges together and drive the business forward when back in the workplace.

Team Building That Gets Results

• We have a highly innovative team who design team builds to suit all budgets and time or space restrictions. Large or small, we will develop the perfect event to meet your commercial objectives, keeping in line with your values and company culture. More recently we have combined team galvanising events with ways to engage the participants with and support their local communities. This solution has proved extremely popular with our clients, and we are continuing to develop more and more programmes doing exactly this.

Why are Team Building Programmes Necessary?

• The majority of managers understand the importance of having highly trained and skilled employees, but unfortunately, a much smaller number recognise that this is only half the battle in terms of creating a truly effective workforce. A collection of highly trained individuals will be constrained in their output and productivity if they do not communicate or work well with their colleagues.

Employees who do not work well together will often encounter some or all of the following issues:

• Projects take a longer time to complete as people try to do things themselves rather than cooperating and sharing time and other resources.
• The final result can be different to expectations due to miscommunication and misunderstandings.
• An increased likelihood of conflict in the workplace which can devastate the morale and motivation not only of those directly involved, but also everybody else who will feel uncomfortable in the negative working atmosphere.
• A consistent flow of colleagues leaving and new ones replacing them, making it different to establish a working relationship.
• A lack of motivation and desire for the company to succeed and achieve its objectives.

How can a Team Building Programme Help My Business?

• A team building programme from The BCF Group can help your business in two ways. The first is that it will get your employees communicating and working together on projects. In a formal working environment, there may be much more reluctance to approach someone and speak to them regarding a work issue. Even if they do, they may not fully articulate everything they need, or ask any questions that they need answers to. By providing a fun and relaxed atmosphere, people are far more likely to lose any trepidation and engage in communication as they work together in groups on a task.
• Creating this atmosphere is as far as many team building providers go unfortunately. As mentioned at the top of the page, many providers simply facilitate activities to create this environment. By providing fun activities, the hope is that individuals chat to each other and become more comfortable communicating when back at work.

Team Building Events for Actually Improving the Workforce

• At The BCF Group, all of our team building activities are, of course, designed to ensure that they are enjoyable, in order to create this fun atmosphere where individuals feel at ease and more open towards communicating with their colleagues.
• However, unlike most other team building providers, we also take things one step further. We work with you well before the date of the programme, to determine your reasons for actually wanting it in the first place. By finding out what particular issues your staff members are having, as well as learning what their job roles are and what they need to achieve, we ensure that all activities have a theme and objectives that focus on these areas.
• For instance, if you are responsible for the purchasing department within a business, we will incorporate activities that develop the skills that are most needed for people working in such a job role.
• As a basic example, rather than providing a pile of materials and getting people to build something out of them, we design the task with a commercial theme at the forefront and include a currency and purchasing framework. This task will therefore include elements such as planning, budgeting, communication, supply networks, fiscal responsibility and delegation/cooperation.

After the session is over and your employees get back into the workplace, not only will they be better communicators, but they will also have developed the skills that are most crucial for doing their jobs. This focus on improving skills, rather than just getting people to talk more to each other, is one of the main reasons as to why our team development courses are so popular.