Zoom dress up parties, tug-of-war, ‘trust falls’ and escape rooms — team building exercises have become the go-to tool for managers trying to increase team rapport and productivity, but unfortunately many employees resent compulsory bonding and often regard these exercises as the bane of their workplace existence. A paper published by Sydney researchers has found participants have mixed feelings about team-building interventions, with the research revealing ethical implications in forcing employees to take part.

A paper published this week by University of Sydney School of Project Management researchers in the Journal of Social Networks has found participants have mixed feelings about team-building interventions, with the research revealing ethical implications in forcing employees to take part.

«Since publishing our previous research on team-building exercises, many workers told us that they despise team building activities and see them as a waste of time, so we decided to look in more depth at what’s behind this,» said the paper’s lead researcher, Dr Petr Matous, who in 2019 published research with Dr Julien Pollack that argued spending time developing relationships with people you aren’t close to is more effective than general team-bonding exercises.

«Almost every day at work, workers are subjected to interventions that are implicitly or explicitly designed to change our networks of working relationships,» said Dr Matous.

«Teams are formed, merged and restructured, staff are relocated and office spaces are redesigned. We are expected to participate in drinks after work and team building events. All this is done with the aim of improving workplace effectiveness, efficiency, collaboration and cohesion — but does any of this work?» said Dr Matous.

The study found that team-building exercises which focused on the sharing of, and intervening into personal attitudes and relationships between team members may be considered too heavy-handed and intrusive, although the researchers say some degree of openness and vulnerability is often necessary to make deep, effective connections with colleagues.

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