Why Should Your Corporate Team Choose Team Building with a Give Back/Charitable Component?
By Gary Parisher
CEO, Cheeriodicals
For decades corporations have found opportunities to bring their teams together to foster teamwork, build collaboration and strengthen relationships. As corporations grow and more and more employees join their ranks, finding ways to bring teams together is more important than ever before.
Corporations will oftentimes bring together different divisions of their companies to discuss current plans and initiatives. The teams are commonly a section of the company, like the sales/marketing team, manufacturing team, etc. These teams are so much more productive when they can break down barriers, improve communication and focus on team-based results.
So, if we can agree on the importance of bringing teams together, the question then becomes, what team building experiences are the best option when teams gather for meetings? The choices for corporate team building are truly unlimited these days. There are options not just for in-person events, but hybrid and virtual team building events which are more prevalent than ever given the recent pandemic.
Along that spectrum of in-person/hybrid/virtual events, each of these event styles have a broad range of options including: fun events (golf, bowling, pickleball), trust building events (ropes climbing courses, fall-back in colleague’s arms), food/drink-based events (restaurant tours, drink-making courses, brewery hopping), adventure events (hot air balloon rides, skydiving, rock climbing) and so many more.
At Cheeriodicals, we narrowed our focus to provide and execute team building activities “that matter”. It’s not that other team building activities aren’t fun, enjoyable or worthwhile… they are. It’s that our niche is to offer a team building experience that, in addition to meeting the usual fun standards, it also has a measurable positive impact on the local community. The tried and tested terminology used in the team building world to describe events that make a difference is noted as corporate socially responsible team building. And yes, it has an acronym well known in the corporate world to highlight this version of team building – CSR Team Building.
As you consider the options for your team building experience and you believe you’d like to steer your colleagues in the direction of a CSR-driven team building activity, keep in mind there is a growing list of reasons for making this choice. Each reason has its own merits and cumulatively, they support the rationale to choose your team building activity thoughtfully, and with intention.
Top 6 Reasons to Include CSR-driven Team Building in Your Corporate Meetings
1. CSR Matters More Than Ever
The majority of corporations today have website pages devoted solely to detail their CSR initiatives and results. These CSR web pages often highlight the corporation’s focus on the environment, water conservation, carbon emission mitigation, charitable giving or employee volunteerism. Many of their prospective and current corporate clients will review the CSR policy as they decide whether to work with and/or partner with the company. Lastly, the majority of annual corporate reports have specific sections reviewing CSR initiatives to provide clarity to their focus on this important aspect of their corporation.
Simply put, CSR matters more than ever to corporations, clients, prospective clients, partners, collaborators, media and everyone involved. When a corporation chooses to execute team building experiences that are tailored to CSR efforts, the impact is remarkable. Those efforts are even more pronounced when those CSR team building activities mirror their own corporate initiatives.
At Cheeriodicals, we offer CSR team building activities that benefit a broad range of individuals in need, including: hospitalized kids, hospitalized Veterans, Ronald McDonald House families, frontline hospital workers, oncology and dialysis patients, and even backpacks for kindergarteners/elementary aged children going back to school in under-resourced markets. Why not make your team building experiences not only offer a fun activity, but also impact those in need of a lift in spirits?
2. Perception is Reality – Are Your Team Building Events Excessive, Unreasonable, or Over the Top?
Years ago I worked in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. In those days, companies in the life sciences industry were very cautious about their corporate events and how they may be perceived by outsiders. The financial expenditure by these companies was highly scrutinized, mostly due to the high cost of products.
The same still applies to this day. Corporations that succeed in the life sciences industry have to be very careful with how and where they spend their money, and especially how it may be perceived by others. The media, politicians, talk show hosts and many others are quick to point out the cost of products and services in the healthcare and life sciences industry. Event planners and other corporate decision makers have to be exceedingly careful to not schedule and pay for events that give off the wrong perception. Corporations have so many things to consider when choosing a team building experience, and it’s often the best choice to forgo the high-end/expensive or over the top events when the lay public is questioning your corporate profits. Corporations can’t go wrong with choosing team building events that have a measurable impact on communities where they operate and their employees reside. Lastly, if their events are outside their corporate geography, they should always consider making a positive impact in the areas where their meetings take place.
3. Team Building That Gives Back Emotionally Bonds Teams Together
The overall goal of any team building activity is to bring the team together and to identify ways to bond the team. If you ask any event/meeting professional, they’ll share with you that choosing the right kind of event is crucial to meeting that goal. Many of those planners have learned from past experiences not only what works, but sometimes more importantly, what doesn’t work.
One of the best ways to ensure that teams come together and truly bond is to include an emotional experience in their team building effort. When any of us think back to the most memorable moments in our lives, the majority of those moments involve a significant emotional connection.
We have experienced so many emotional moments in the twelve plus years of executing our Cheeriodicals events, and they have all been memorable. We’ve seen so many examples of teammates working together at a table, packing their big green boxes of cheer, sharing details about when their child/nephew/niece/grandchild/neighbor’s child battled health issues in a pediatric hospital. We’ve witnessed teammates sharing hugs and tears as they came together to do work for children in similar situations that they may never see, except when a parent sends a thank you note to our social media to thank the corporate team. And yes, we actually get quite a few of those social media thank you photos/notes and they are truly life-changing.
Let’s not forget the opportunities where we get to include 4-5 team building participants in the actual deliveries of the Cheeriodicals to the hospitals. We’ve witnessed teams gather after a delivery to a child’s room, or a Veteran’s room, simply for a chance to catch their breath and lean on a colleague’s shoulder after a particularly emotional visit with a hospitalized child.
Suffice to say, emotional experiences are the cornerstone of memories and if you can include emotions in your team building, your event will foster even more team bonding than ever before.
4. Charities and Healthcare Facilities Are in Need of Support
Report after report shows that over the last few years one of the areas most impacted by the economic downturn and rising inflation is the philanthropic market, specifically related to healthcare-based charities and facilities. While individuals have less disposable income over the last few years to donate to these facilities, many corporations also have had some trying times navigating the economic downturn. In general, charity and healthcare organizations are working with less donations and in many cases, have even more patients to support using those dwindled resources.
Many of our donation recipient partners (children’s hospitals, VA hospitals and Ronald McDonald Houses) have shared with us how their donations have seen significant reductions since 2020. They are seeking ways to build new relationships with corporations and rekindle ones from their past.
We found over the last 3 years that when our corporate team building partners ask us to reach out to children’s hospitals, VA hospitals and other recipient partners to make a Cheeriodicals delivery, they are exceedingly agreeable to receive Cheeriodicals deliveries. Simply put, they need these resources and are excited about opportunities to nurture these corporate relationships.
5. Virtual Opportunities Are Available
The COVID-19 pandemic changed many aspects of the way that companies operate. We are all aware of how corporations shifted their workforce to remote roles, adjusted in-person meetings to Zoom/Microsoft Teams, and basically designed ways to conduct business virtually. I think we can all agree that those corporate pivots, in a time when the entire world was in uncharted territory, created an entirely new way for services to be considered and of course executed.
Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began we noticed that corporations were unable to continue many of their volunteering activities. Prior to the pandemic, most if not all volunteering opportunities were done in-person. Within the first few months of the pandemic, all in-person volunteering was halted and the organizations that depended on volunteerism, product, and monetary donations were in quicksand. A lot of these organizations quickly disbanded operations (especially the smaller and less-known charities) while the larger charities and healthcare facilities hunkered down and proceeded forward while using less resources.
We learned during the early pandemic days that corporations still wanted to give back, still wanted to get together, and still wanted to make an impact. Was it possible to do this virtually?
We, too, adapted and created a way to host our Cheeriodicals team building experiences on virtual platforms, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Cheeriodicals ships all the supplies directly to the homes of participants. Then Cheeriodicals leads the team (25 people up to 1,000+) on the virtual calls, sharing stories of impact, detailed the packing instructions, included guest hospital speakers, and even captured selfies and team photos (imagine the large Zoom photos). [need to rework this sentence – it runs on too long] Cheeriodicals executes our usual Cheeriodicals events with the same human touch and interaction, just virtually.
Creating a virtual team building event experience was a big hit, and we were nearly as busy then as prior to the pandemic. Corporations were struggling to find avenues to give-back through virtual team building and we realized early on that we had become a valuable resource for those companies, many of whom still have remote employees to this day.
Creating those virtual options for team building when it was the only option has led us to continue to offer virtual options when it’s a better choice. Sometimes it’s not workable to host an event for 10 participants, but with virtual/hybrid meetings, it’s much easier and affordable. The smaller teams can still hold a meaningful volunteer event with significant impact.
6. Your Corporate Clients Notice Your Give Back/ Charitable Focus
It is not uncommon for a potential client to bounce around your website to ensure that your company values corporate social responsibility. Many clients actually have corporate objectives to ensure that their business partners meet specific minimum requirements with regard to giving, charity, and general corporate social responsibility.
Consider the appearance of your company spending money for a team building experience with a lavish dinner cruise on a party boat (just one example) compared to the look of your team packing care packages for hospitalized children or other persons in need. We hear over and over again after we execute our corporate events how our clients receive feedback and support for their Cheeriodicals efforts. We even receive direct messages thanking our clients (on both Cheeriodicals and our clients’ social platforms) from partners of our clients simply noting their appreciation of their effort. We are amazed at the number of times prospective clients see what our current clients have done with Cheeriodicals team building and share with us how those choices have inspired efforts within their companies.
It’s a full circle process – clients notice what you do and they will thank you, share that thanks on social media, often choose to work with your business/use your products, when other alternatives are not active on the giving and CSR front.
In summary, these are just a few of the many reasons why choosing a give-back/CSR-driven team building activity is the ideal choice for your corporation at your next national or regional meeting. Please reach out (corporateplanner@cheeriodicals.com) if you would like us to design a team building activity that meets all those give back and impactful criteria, and yet offers a super-fun experience your team will remember forever.