Could this be your next away day?

Yes, you heard right – how to convince your boss to buy you an Aston Martin (well, at least for the day). This blog will show you how to convince your boss to treat you and your team to an adrenaline-fuelled, high-speed driving experience in one of England’s most iconic cars. And it doesn’t stop there. It will show you how to convince him / her to invest their hard-earned cash in sailing days, wine tasting events and even robot wars for you and your colleagues. And the list goes on. The trick? Simply learn how to demonstrate ROI for team building events and you can bag an adventure day for your team. Here are 6 ways you can increase your chances of getting budget for your workplace’s team building event…

1. Present Statistics

Have you had a previous team building event before but perhaps you now have a new boss / budget holder who needs to be convinced of the benefits? Why not use a site like SurveyMonkey to conduct a questionnaire with all the attendees. Ask them essential questions such as, ‘Do you feel you formed stronger working relationships with your team members as a result of the event?’ or, ‘On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your level of motivation after the event.’

You can then compile these into an essential report to pass to your budget holder with key statistics such as ‘98% of [your business] employees felt that their ability to solve problems as a team increased after the event.’ If you’ve never hosted a team building event, you could kindly ask team building agencies for statistics.

2. Determine Your Team’s Performance Needs and Objectives

As the old adage goes, ‘if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it’. It’s a similar situation when trying to demonstrate ROI for team building events to your budget holder. By simply saying, “It will be fun for the team” won’t cut the monetary mustard when the budget holder is carefully deliberating where to invest their finite amount of cash. It’s essential to identify performance gaps and create objectives for the event, demonstrating how the event will enable your team to reach these objectives.

3. Sight Specific Situations

When determining your team’s performance gaps, identify real-life examples where circumstances could have been handled more effectively as a team. Show the impact of these results, factorising in metrics such as the potential time of delays, increased costs, potential opportunities lost and reduced effectiveness in decision-making. Highlight the time lost by multiplying this by the number of people involved in the situation and the salaries of the team members involved and it will soon start to add up and set financial alarm bells ringing in your budget holder’s head.

4. Factor in Unquantifiable Costs

There are other, less tangible, factors related to poor team cohesion such as low morale, poor working relationships, bullying, erosion of the team and poor decision making as a result. While a team building event won’t necessarily ensure Doreen from accounts kisses and makes up with Mike from marketing after their recent spat, it will at least provide a launchpad for building bridges and enhancing relationships. Often people in work environments are under pressure and act differently outside of work, enabling them to bond in a relaxed and fun environment.

5. Shop Around First

Be sure to research various prices for team building events before approaching your budget holder. If you can find a cheap option to present to your budget holder this will give them a tangible idea of costs. To get the best price, try looking at seasonal offers such as Christmas team building events. Also, be sure to compile all this data into a report demonstrating the costs of not doing a team event vs the benefits (including financial) of doing a team building event.

6. Power in Numbers

Often, team building events are given as a fun reward for the team’s hard work. If your team has been doing particularly well, be sure to cite statistics such as year-on-year profit generated from your team’s activities. Nobody wants to be seen as a Scrooge, so the more statistics to back up a reward for your team’s endeavours the better. What’s more, you could do a brief survey to see how keen the staff are for a fun event. The more people who want it to happen, the more persuasive power you have when approaching your budget holder.

Try these 6 tips and you’ll be smelling the sweet leather of the inside of a DB7 in no time. For more awesome events, visit our events list here!

Good luck!

image credits: www.thecarconnection.com