Want to bring your team on board with your company’s CSR policy? Keen to promote eco-friendly habits or socially responsible practices across your organisation? Excellent idea! The most fun, most effective and most lasting way to get there is CSR team building. What does that actually involve? And how do you get the best results? Here are all the answers.
What is team building?
At its simplest, team building means organising a one-off activity in the form of a challenge, a workshop or a facilitated session that calls for the collective participation of a company’s employees.
These are usually playful, sporting or creative activities designed to help employees pick up certain habits and drop others. The aims are to:
- bring teams together;
- spark employee engagement;
- stimulate creativity and encourage new ideas and working practices;
- boost motivation and employee engagement;
- encourage teamwork and strengthen team cohesion;
- improve overall performance, for your people and your company.
CSR team building: what does it actually mean?
CSR team building refers to team building activities built around themes such as business ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility, and so on.
It’s a strategy designed to raise awareness among employees of your organisation’s CSR policy through a playful, sporting or creative approach. Done well, it helps your people embrace the company’s CSR culture and encourages them to pull together towards collective action. You have several options. You can pick an activity from the catalogue of a committed team building provider such as Arcane Experience, or you can develop a bespoke game built around your specific CSR challenges.
Why run CSR team building in your company?
Sustainability and corporate social responsibility are now essential considerations for companies in every sector. International ISO standards and the UN Global Compact also call for social and environmental concerns to be built into a company’s economic performance.
That said, taking environmental, social and economic issues seriously requires a shift in organisational culture and a change in individual and collective behaviour. Management therefore has to encourage engagement at both levels.
This is exactly where CSR team building comes in. It taps into the way we all learned best from the very start: through play ! And because participants interact with the messages they receive, impact, understanding and recall all improve. Play creates a level playing field, where people take ownership of ideas as members of the group. Finally, an event-based game leaves a lasting impression, much like a great film.
It also shows that your company is genuinely committed to sustainability. And a CSR approach is now a powerful way to strengthen your brand image with stakeholders.
Involving your people in your CSR strategy through team building also creates a sense of pride and gives more meaning to their role within the company.
Which themes should a CSR team building day cover?
If you want to run CSR team building, your activities need to focus on a few core questions. Themes worth exploring include:
- the zero-waste company;
- responsible electricity consumption;
- mindful, measured use of water resources;
- wellbeing, health and safety at work;
- tackling discrimination;
- workplace relations;
- protecting biodiversity;
- promoting sustainable purchasing;
- and more.
Choosing the right activities is therefore vital. Those you select must match your company’s CSR policy and values. It’s equally important for facilitators to favour activities with a low environmental impact.
For example, opt for activities that keep car journeys to a minimum and have as little impact on nature as possible. For food and drink, source from local suppliers.
CSR team building activities can take place in the office, or you can step outside the usual setting (during a company offsite, for instance) and take your people out of their comfort zone.
Either way, if long journeys are involved, public transport should always come before the car. Everything possible should be done to reduce the carbon footprint of your CSR team building activities.
Eco-friendly team building activity ideas to try
There are hundreds of activities you can run with your teams as part of a CSR team building day. At Arcane Experience, these commitments matter to us, and we offer CSR activities such as:
- La Fresque du Climat – a corporate game raising awareness of climate issues
- Follow The Brain – a corporate game raising awareness of discrimination
- Les super-héros du quotidien – a creative workshop on eco-friendly habits at work
Every CSR team building activity should fit your wider sustainability strategy. It has to stay within budget and remain original, entertaining and warm enough to lift everyone’s spirits. But it must also strike a perfect balance between fun and awareness-raising.
The entertainment side must never overshadow the awareness and behaviour change that CSR team building is meant to drive. Get it right, and the benefits for your company’s overall performance and brand image will soon show.
