Roll the dice on team building

Team building exercises; we’ve all been there and it’s not unreasonable to say it can be a bit hit or miss.How often do you actually come away feeling all that positive? How often do you think ‘wow, that was awesome’? Not that arranging a team building day is all that easy. We pity those managers who must try to dream up something truly inspiring, that appeals to staff and bosses, and comes in within budget. They must beware being too cheesy, whilst also remembering to achieve their stated aims for the day.

For anyone who is planning a day for seasoned team building veterans, there is the added angst of dreaming up something unusual, new and, hopefully, so out of the blue the day is remembered for months to come.

All this is, of course, leading up to what we think makes the perfect team building day: fun casino hire.

Gambling? While it may not suit every human relations department and could feasibly fall short of some companies’ corporate social responsibility policies, there are a number of reasons why hiring a poker table or roulette table makes sense in this situation.

First, it’s fun. There doesn’t need to be much more to it than that. After all, when your proteges spend their lives in dreary servitude, what better way to get the blood flowing and the passion high than having a flutter?

Point two, and one that has a little more substance for the bosses, it can be really useful as the base for some tasks.

For example, just about every job out there requires some kind of numeracy skills. And for the serious number crunchers, working out odds is a fun task.

But even if your team is made up of call centre workers whose skills lie in dealing with individuals, not integers, having groups work together on figuring out the odds for the different games is incredibly beneficial for getting them to collaborate and think analytically about a task. You can get people on different games to work out odds – why not decide which out of blackjack, craps or roulette offers the best odds?

Thirdly, a task that gets your team thinking about reading body language and psychology can be perfectly set up with a game of poker. For groups needing to consider how to figure out what people might be thinking, a game of Texas Hold ‘Em is hard to beat.

Just remember to keep it friendly and professional; keep real cash away from the tables and make sure there are prizes for the teams with the most chips at the end of the round or day.