Contemporary Office Team Building

A great team building idea is a cooking class.

Team Building Ideas to Meet Your Needs

Although other office team building ideas or exercises exist, we have found cooking as a team building method produces the greatest results. That’s why, at Team Building with Taste, we offer three unique, engaging culinary team building programs to meet the needs of modern companies and teams.

Learn about the origins of team building and the history of different office team building exercises. You’ll discover why Team Building with Taste is so well-suited to produce highly effective teams in the modern workplace.

The History of Team Building

The idea of team building originated in the 1920s and 30s when Professor Elton Mayo began studying how work conditions affected productivity at the Western Electric Hawthorne Works. His studies became known as the Hawthorne Experiments, which involved working with an isolated group of female factory workers and measuring productivity under different working conditions.

During Mayo’s study, he discovered what is now known as the “Hawthorne Effect”, which simply means people are prone to alter their behavior when they know they are being studied. One of his most important discoveries was the importance of developing a sense of group identity.

The experiments realized informal groups within a workplace tend to shape the behavior and perspectives of the workers as well as the company culture. They also found groups could be positively altered by fostering relationships between management and employees. This allows employees to contribute ideas and feedback related to working conditions, while receiving recognition for their work.

Culinary Team Building as an Alternative to Typical Games & Sports

Many companies have arranged games, sports, and other physical activities as attempts at team building. Whether your company has gone bowling or played mini-golf, you know there are certain elements lacking that prevent these events from achieving successful team building.

Other stereotypical attempts at team building include activities such as trust falls. However, trust falls can be dangerous and make people less comfortable with their co-workers rather than more comfortable.

The problem with these events is they cater only to certain individuals’ interests and abilities without improving the existing group dynamics within a company.

At Team Building with Taste, we allow supervisors to determine which employees they would like to place into teams. We focus our culinary team building programs around preparing and eating a meal because of deliciously universal nature of food.

Alternatives to Escape the Room

In recent years, Escape the Room facilities have become a popular fad. These team-based activities task groups with finding clues and solving puzzles to escape a locked room within a certain amount of time. Because Escape the Room activities involve pre-determined clues, it commonly fails to mirror the workplace accurately.

At Team Building with Taste, we also give teams a deadline, but then, we introduce unique opportunities for creativity as well as last-minute challenges. Allowing people creative opportunities engages them and improves their sense of self-worth, while the challenges force teams to be resourceful and to learn how to rely on one another.

Once teams complete our exercise, they don’t just have a feeling of accomplishment. They get to enjoy a delicious meal prepared through teamwork. Throughout the challenge, our team building chefs offer feedback, which rewards teams with individualized attention, praise, and constructive criticism.

Book Your Culinary Team Building Event in Atlanta

At Team Building with Taste, we have studied the origin of team building in order to provide the most modern and inclusive team building programs available. Companies that have enjoyed success with and praised our team building experience include: