Team Away Day

A full day's team building for the Arthouse team at this international financial management company was a fun, informal and highly creative day that managed to combine a business focus with specific learning objectives to ensure that everyone felt they'd got something out of the day.

"I think the day definitely exceeded my expectations, as I wasn't sure what to expect - it was a fun day, working effectively as a team and I think everyone benefited from it."

The venue, chosen by the client, was the Wallace Space in Covent Garden - a good, central London venue with bright, colourful and modern meeting rooms. The morning's activities included a light-hearted ice-breaker and a creative energiser to get the groups working in teams, before moving on to look at the results of the Team 360 survey carried out prior to the event. A review session over coffee gave participants a chance to think about the morning sessions and how the survey could influence team development.

"I think it certainly helped with team bonding… Also it has helped us appreciate our strengths, realise a few areas where improvements can be made, and understand how others perceive us."

Other sessions covered goal-setting - looking at how individual and team targets are set - as well as how under or over-achievement can be determined by targets. The morning session ended on a light-hearted note with the Fish! film, part of the hugely successful film and book series about the (world famous) Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. The film is a good way of getting participants to think of ways in which they can make work fun and develop a positive attitude to their job, colleagues and wider role within the organisation.

"It was great fun! Far less 'corporate' and much more team focused."

The programme also included the ever-popular Fresh Tracks' Chocolate Challenge.

"The Chocolate Challenge was beyond expectation and a great team building event."

This fun and creative challenge requires teams to design and make an original box of chocolates from raw ingredients and provides plenty of opportunity for dipping into molten chocolate throughout the afternoon. The teams came up with a range of ideas for their boxes of chocolates and, in a competitive challenge, also had to produce marketing, packaging and strategic plans and make a 30 second TV commercial.

"We all had immense fun whilst demonstrating our creativity, planning and time management."

Over tea, the teams' boxes were judged and their TV commercials were viewed, with points awarded for humour, creativity, originality and effectiveness. A prize was awarded to the winning team as part of a final review and de-brief of the afternoon's activities.

"Well organised, varied and most importantly fun. The events team were capable, organised and easy to get along with."