Team Rewards and Cooking Team Building

When thinking about Team Building, it’s easy to look at the end goals like productivity increases or working past relationship dynamics between employees. These are, after all, often the point of team building exercises. Team rewards, incentives, prizes, and recognition are all equally important to providing a safe and fun team building environment. Employees respond well to rewards, especially when everyone gets to participate. Cooking team building is a great way to both build your team and reward them for their hard work.

Why Reward My Team?

Your team comes into the office, puts in their time, and moves projects out the door in a timely manner without asking for much in return. As a leader, you can do one of two things. You can either stay silent and not reward your team for a job well done, and continue the status quo. Or, you can reward your team and give them an incentive to try harder and exceed expectations.

Motivated workers are more likely to be enthusiastic about workplace projects than workers who are unmotivated. Giving your team a boost will help reinvigorate your team and inspire them to do better.

For some people, monetary rewards are satisfying. For others, especially high-performing teams, non-monetary rewards like public recognition, parties with cake and sweets, or little gifts of appreciation are very effective.

Do’s and Don’ts of Team Rewards

Here are some things to consider when you are planning your team building activities and rewards. Remember that your team comes from a diverse background, so you’ll want to try to appeal to everyone without being too generic.

Don’ts

• Don’t make your team building activity strictly about competition. If the focus is too much on competing, then no one will benefit from the great cooperative opportunity at hand.
• Don’t try to teach your team members new concepts or skills while in a competitive environment. This causes undue stress, and at the end of the day, your team will have retained very little of the new information. New concepts are best absorbed in cooperative environments.
• Don’t allow winning teams to belittle their competition, as this will achieve the exact opposite of building a solid team.

Do’s

• Do ensure that your team building activity and rewards aren’t seen as a waste of time. Provide meaningful and fun activities for your team, and give them appropriate rewards.
• Do encourage cooperation in the team-building setting, making sure that everyone’s voice and opinion can be heard.
• Do include platforms for your employees to translate their newfound dynamics or learnings to the workplace.
• Do offer your teams rewards. However, take the time to find out what kind of rewards your team members would appreciate. You wouldn’t want to accidentally give a salami and cheese box to a vegan, for example.

Mementos or memorabilia, as well as useful gifts such as multi-tools, food or wine baskets, gift cards, and computer gadgets are common but effective incentives. Run your ideas by friends or family if you aren’t sure about something.

Team Rewards and Cooking Team Building

One difficulty about team building and rewards is that one team is inherently the ‘losing’ team. This can be a heavy blow for many participants’ egos or esteem. It can be made far worse if anyone on the winning team is a ‘sore winner’. A team building activity gone wrong can cause a lot of damage.

That’s why Team Building With Taste is a great way to build and reward your team. Everyone gets rewarded at the end of the competition by getting to enjoy the delicious meals that they’ve just cooked. Every participant in one of our culinary team building challenges will enjoy a fun evening full of cooperative teamwork, and each participant has an equal voice and opinion.

Working together to create a multi-course meal – and then sitting down together to enjoy it – will be a reward in itself. At the end of the day, additional rewards are a great compliment to cooking team building activities. Your team will build new relationships, as well as fun memories together. You’ll find that your team will be motivated to work together and help each other out after our cooking team building challenges.

Contact Team Building With Taste to set up team building kitchen today.