An increasing number of companies are letting employees play video games at work in order to boost morale in their workplaces. Some are going as far as setting up break rooms with video games consoles to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere for their employees. Almost a quarter of white-collar workers currently play video games at work, and 84 percent say they feel more relaxed after indulging in child’s play, according to a recently released survey.

Some workers even admitted to playing video games during business meetings or conference calls, but most played during breaks or intermittently throughout the day, according to the nonscientific survey by video game provider PopCap Games. Garth Chouteau, PopCap Games Spokesman says “it is akin to doodling.”  Remarkably, “you really don’t use all of the mental bandwidth you have when you’re playing video games at work.”

More than a third of higher-level executives admitted to playing video games at work, compared to 23 percent of other white-collar workers.

He suggests 3 key reasons why you should treat your top performers the same way you treat any other major investment, such as an automobile or your new house.

1. Investing in your employees will dramatically improve the overall performance of your company. As Zig Ziglar states, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If your best team members recognize that you are just as interested in them as you are in the bottom line, they will produce more. Would your top performers be less likely to spend 45 minutes every morning on ESPN.com if they knew that you just spent $2,500 on a training class that will help them develop valuable skills?

2. Your best employees will stay longer in an environment where they are constantly being challenged and improving. The key to keeping the most talented individuals as long as possible is to diminish the powerful effects of the grass is always greener syndrome. One way of doing this is to ensure that they are continuously asking themselves Would I be able to learn all this great stuff somewhere else?

3. If and when they do leave, those employees who recognize how valuable your efforts were to their careers will provide you with two important benefits. First, they will be more likely to return and second, they will recommend their peers who will also tend to be top performers.

If you are looking for a way to develop team team work skills, there are a couple of ideas that have been proven successful time and time again. It is up to you to decide what kind of team work project you need to incorporate, and how much time, effort, and money you are willing to put into the project. Building team work capacity is one sure fire way to get better production for your employees. If you can build team work and happiness in your employees, they will in turn reward you by improving that all mighty bottom line.

In the past few years, team building has taken off to become one of the biggest trends in the business sector–and there are plenty of people who are willing to write about it, including business psychologists and professional consultants. Take the advice of these professionals as they have studied the field much more than you have and will have invaluable advice.

One great book to check out if you are interested in team building is Quick Team Building Activities for Busy Managers: 50 Exercises that get Results in Just 15 Minutes by Brian Cole Miller. This book offers team building activities to busy managers that do not have time to waste an entire day shaping his or her team. As the title says, this book offers 50 unique exercizes that only take 15 minutes to complete. This is a great book if you just want to incorporate one exercise a day. One excercise a day can be all you need to build teamwork. Even large companies, such as Walmart ™, do team building excercizes on a daily basis. As you can tell, Walmart has a well oiled machine in it’s efforts towards being employee owned.

You may also want to check out Team Building Activities for Every Group by Alanna Jones. This book will help you to find the team work activity that is appropriate for your company. There are activities that will suit the needs of every type of group. If you are unsure of which activity may be best for your people, simply try one and see what the results are. You can fine tune the daily activity to the point that the employees take part willingly.

Overall, team work is an essential topic for any company that is looking to expand. By purchasing one of these books you will be taking a step in the right direction. Check out your local bookstore today for a wealth of information.

About The Author

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. He has written many great articles on many topics, including team building. For more information, please visit http://www.my-team-building.info/ You may also be interested in Keith’s other offerings at his site http://keithlondrie.com/

There is a lot of uninspiring team building out there. An ice breaker here, a problem to solve there … The best part of the day for participants is when they go home at the end of the day. Team building does not have to be tedious or predictable, here are four great team building ideas which can help to gel your team and develop innovative thinking skills in a great environment.

People of a certain age will clearly remember a TV programme in which Stuart Hall and Eddie Waring had a great time organising and commentating whilst ordinary people floundered around in bizarre foam-rubber suits on washing-up liquid soaked bouncy castles. The programme? It’s a Knockout. To succeed, the teams had to support one another, think quickly to solve problems and of course make an informed decision about when to play the joker to gain double points. This is now available to do the same for your team!

The TV series Spooks has generated a huge interest in espionage and the work of secret agents and spies. The latter have to learn to think on their feet and to make instant decisions – wouldn’t it be great if your teams could do that. The series Spy School was compelling watching as ordinary people followed a secret service training course. Many aspects of the secret services have now been adapted for team building – activities such as agents in disguise, bomb disposal, evasive driving and safe cracking are used to challenge business teams, bringing the members together and developing their problem solving skills.

Corporate treasure hunts are another motivational way to team build. Here a team is faced with far too many clues than can possibly be answered in the time available. Decision making takes place first, where the team agree on the route – you soon find out who are the leaders! Then the co-operation and lateral thinking skills are developed as the team addresses their clues and finally flexibility is nurtured as the team adapt their strategy as time is running out.

Mediaeval team building is great fun, with activities like jousting and sheep throwing, but it involves all of the key aspects of team building. Team members have to learn new skills in a short time, make collaborative decisions and overcome challenges that they would not normally encounter – all skills that are essential to a successful corporate team.

So you see, team building need not be met with groans of dismay from your employees. Give them a day to remember. But like a new pet is not just for Christmas, Team building is not just for a day! You will need to make sure that the skills from your team building day are reinforced … but that is a subject for another article.

About The Author

Kevin Woodward of chevinside.com designs, builds and optimises many team building web sites, such as Treasure Hunts and Spy Games Team Building Ltd, both of whom deliver innovative team building solutions for businesses of all sizes.