These days, every organization out there is starting to take the wellness of their employees much more seriously. The need to provide for the health of your employees ensures they remain healthy for longer and reduces the chances of something terrible occurring. Taking the initiative to ensure your employees are well can have your organization continue to operate smoothly and remain successful. Furthermore, your employees will become increasingly loyal, knowing that their leaders care for them.
Remote work has provided several benefits for employees, but it has also introduced a whole other set of issues that need careful handling. Remote managers need to ensure that their teams are remaining productive and collaborative. However, that can be tough without the manager guiding them onward and starting group activities that can help everyone develop a trustworthy relationship.
There is also the fact that remote workers are dealing with issues of balancing work and personal life. The number of things they need to take care of will eventually overwhelm them and make them experience severe amounts of stress and burnout. That will eventually lead to them becoming less productive and efficient with their work, impacting the entire organization. Managers want to do everything they can to ensure that their remote teams are doing well health-wise. However, they need to also make sure they are developing bonds with each other.
Fortunately, there are ways for remote leaders to ensure their teams improve their wellness and develop powerful team bonds. Team wellness activities are excellent for remote teams since they not only promote the idea of bettering themselves, but they can do so alongside their team members. Let us go over how group wellness activities can improve your team's bonding.
Improves morale
One of the primary reasons you want to have your remote team conduct a group wellness activity is to improve the overall morale of your remote team. Having an enthusiastic and positive remote workforce that feels like they are cared for will envelop everyone with a positive feeling whenever they communicate with each other. Creating a space where everyone is in an excellent mood makes it more fun for everyone to hop on their computers and start working with their team members.
Conducting team bonding activities and games that improve the overall morale can help lower barriers between remote employees and provide you with ideas on how to develop and maintain a positive interaction with everyone. Positivity in the team ensures they are less likely to feel stress and dread whenever they need to interact with one of the team members.
Enhances productivity
Organizations want to ensure that their employees are always remaining productive. The more productive your remote team is, the better the work they get done quickly and efficiently. Group wellness activities provide them with an opportunity to relax and get to know their team members better. These group wellness activities will serve as a bridge for them to form bonds with their fellow remote coworkers. The better your team's communication is, the better their collaboration attempts will have on productivity levels.
Having a common goal to work towards together will lead to there being less friction among the remote team members and causing the output from everyone to increase. The wellness activities conducted by the groups have them bond over the hard work they each put into their attempts as self-improvement. For instance, if your team is doing exercise challenges, everyone can encourage and celebrate each other's achievements from these challenges. That will translate will into these collaboration attempts. Increasing productivity levels is one of the most sought-after goals that both the organization and employees look to achieve when they join these group wellness activities.
Improves communication
Communication is one of the most necessary parts of remote work. Without communication, the team won’t be able to collaborate effectively enough during specific tasks or projects. Not only that, but they will hesitate to reach out to fellow team members whenever they need assistance or require something from them. It also prevents them from reaching out to their managers, thinking they might be punished for troubling them with something they perceive as trivial.
These group wellness activities encourage the remote team to communicate with one another to accomplish tasks and solve problems. By placing everyone in a fun and relaxing environment that has nothing to do with work, you will prompt everyone to relax, be themselves and open up to each other.
For example, you can challenge your remote employees to solve problems within a certain amount of time to give them a chance to work together. Organize your remote employees into a small group and have them work together to get through a problem-solving activity, such as an escape room. These problem-solving activities are excellent for developing teamwork, as employees can identify each other's strengths and weaknesses and use that knowledge to work together.
Better Mental Health
Frequent group wellness activity is great for your remote employees. Encouraging them to take up problem-solving challenges and physical activities assists with improving their overall mental health. Performing physical activities as a group ensures they not only improve alongside their team but bond over the fact that they are both sharing the same struggles. As they progress, the proof that they are improving in their endeavors will serve as a massive boost in confidence and self-esteem.
Taking part in physical activities serves as an excellent way for remote employees to step away from their computers, clear their minds and feel healthier. That provides a massive boost to their overall mental health. To encourage them, consider setting up exercises challenges of varying levels, so they can attempt to break a record each month. The results can be shared with the rest of the team to show how much they have improved over time.
Puzzle-solving activities done in collaboration with each other also assist benefit. Getting them together to solve an issue improves their collaboration skills and provides that dopamine hit they need to be more positive whenever they achieve something together. The encouragement they offer to each other will result in them being in a better mood by the end of the task. The feeling of satisfaction will carry them throughout the day, improving their mood and mental health.
Physical Health
Encouraging your remote team to take up some form of exercise will benefit their wellness overall. Sitting at their homework desk all day is not doing anything positive for their physical health. Group wellness activities concerning physical activities are an excellent way to improve their physical health and improve team bonding. There are several ways to do this, such as setting up group yoga, workouts, and forth. You can even subscribe to an exercise app that allows them to track their progress and share it with the rest of the team.
You can introduce a set of exercises challenging them to achieve each month, such as running for 20 minutes every four days. These challenges can also be turned into competitions, in which whoever manages to do the best by the end of the month ends up on a leaderboard. The leaderboard can show who the current number one employee has achieved the monthly exercise goals. Incentivize it by providing a reward at the end, such as a gift card. Not only will this encourage the rest of the group to do their best, but light up some competitive yet friendly competition among your remote group members.
Keep in mind that your organization does see a slowdown in productivity if your employees remain unwell. Promoting physical health ensures your team remains healthy and destress from the daily grind of work. It also provides the team with a way to develop bonds that are vital for the organization to maintain optimal workflow.
Responsibility and trust
During these group wellness activities, everyone on the remote team will contribute in some way. Otherwise, they are letting the entire team down. The feeling of letting down a group of people you know we're counting on you can be devastating and embarrassing for most. The activities will show them that their team members need their assistance and that they need to pick up the slack. Doing so will provide them with a boost in confidence and happiness, knowing that they managed to assist their team in a time of need. These activities will reinforce the responsibilities that everyone has and spread throughout the rest of the organization.
Furthermore, these activities will encourage colleagues to get to know each other better on a personal level. That bonding will lead to trust developing over time, which is a significant benefit for group wellness activities as everyone on the team will know each other's capabilities and interests. This eventually leads to better collaboration on projects and boosted morale.
Conclusion
Group wellness activities ensure your teams are not only improving their overall health but doing so together. These group activities will benefit your organization by providing the team with a way to continue bettering themselves and lifting each other whenever things seem to be down. The bonds they develop will last for a long time, ensuring that cohesion and efficiency are maintained by everyone. Moreover, they will be at their healthiest both physically and mentally, lowering the chances of your team experiencing problems with their personal health and remaining focused.
