How team building can drive agency growth

Every year a number of industry awards aim to recognise the best recruitment businesses across various categories, ranging from small and specialist to regional and large-scale agency of the year. Winners or those businesses who have been nominated should rightly feel proud to be recognised for their achievements.

While focusing on how your agency is perceived externally is essential to building your brand and your position as an agency of choice, focus also needs to be centred on building your teams internally too: cue, team building.

For some, any mention of ‘team building’ sees staff hiding under their desks as a wave of dread overcomes them about an impending series of events that may see them end up looking (and feeling) foolish.

For others, team building is met with enthusiasm – an opportunity to get out of the office and a fun way to pit their wits with their colleagues on a level playing field. Whichever way it is perceived, there is no escaping the fact that team building has the potential to be the best investment you will ever make in your agency.

The idea behind team building is to improve the levels of communication and camaraderie between everyone, mitigate conflict and encourage collaboration between people across all areas of the business.

The outcome can have significant benefits - more engaged employees and an improved bottom line to name but two. Here we take a look at the five biggest benefits that team building can deliver for your agency.

1. It boosts employee engagement

Having great sales people is all very well, but having consultants who are on board with the agency’s vision and the role they each play in making this vision a reality has three key benefits:

1. Improved consultant productivity
2. Improved organisational performance
3. Engaged employees are significantly more loyal to their employer

2. It bolsters your employer brand

One of the biggest challenges recruitment business owners face is - ironically - attracting and retaining consultants for their own agency. Prospective consultants today are looking for something more than just good pay or earning potential; they are increasingly being influenced by a range of factors that make up an employer brand.

According to Glassdoor, 75% of job seekers are influenced by employer brand, while a study by Careeralism found that 80% of job seekers decide whether to apply for a position based on what they find on the employers website and social media channels.

So team building, and sharing images and stories across your public profiles, is also a vital ingredient in your own talent attraction strategy.

3. It improves communication

Poor communication between colleagues and departments is responsible for 86% of all workplace failures, according to a survey conducted by ClearCompany. Team building activities present the perfect opportunity for people to communicate with their colleagues in a way they wouldn’t normally do on a day-to-day basis.

Being placed in scenarios where staff must work together to overcome challenges they have been set breaks down barriers between colleagues. This has been found to remain the case long after everyone is back in the workplace.

4. It drives innovation

In many agencies, the onus is on those at the top to think of new ideas that could drive agency growth. But you don’t have all the answers – with everything else you have going on it would be unfair to expect you to either. The great news is that you don’t have to.

As we have seen, team building is a great way to boost staff engagement. According to the MacLeod Review, engaged workers are more innovative. They are at the front end of the business and as such they can offer new perspectives and are more willing to share ideas. Leaders, on the other hand, tend to interact more with staff and encourage their people to experiment and try new things.

5. It simply makes business sense

According to a study published in the Harvard Business Review, organisations with a poor employer brand, high staff attrition rate and a dis-engaged workforce actually have to hike their salaries up by 10% or more to attract new candidates.

So by committing to building better relationships with your teams with the same degree that you focus on enhancing those with your clients, your business will reap the benefits highlighted above.