Team Building

Team Building: 5 reasons why I enjoyed this experience!

Last month on a Friday afternoon, a part of Microptic team participated on a surprising journey, all together, somewhere “out of the office”.

Therefore, I am going to explain you a little bit what we did that day and why I truly believe this kind of activity is meaningful not only for us like employees, but it also gives unexpected benefits to the company. Here below the 5 reasons why I enjoyed our Team Building Experience:

1. Share quality time all together!

In Microptic we are a small team, working together all day and sharing the same open space. With this kind of configuration, we definitively spend a lot of hours together, seated one next to each other, nevertheless the reality is that I can spend an entire day without talking to someone at the office which is not from my department, or I can be all day with someone talking only about semen analysis products but without asking about personal stuff or his current mood. Meanwhile during our Team Building activities, we had plenty of time to socialize and enjoying being together without talking about work!

What can be better for a team than eating some tapas in a local restaurant?

2. Discover who your co-workers are

Being outside of the working place makes you forget about daily work; it opens our minds and helps us to get to know each other better. During that day for example I could learn about personal life details of my colleagues, we shared private funny stories, pictures of children or pets, age of everyone… We even talked about honeymoon! I do not remember why, anyway now I know who prefer drinking fruit juice rather than red wine :) Trust me we had plenty of random and unexpected conversations. During those chats, you can discover unknow skills to someone you barely know. I am truly convinced that knowing better the persons you spend more than 8 hours per day reinforce the team spirit and improve mutual support.

3. Break routines and stimulate creativity

It’s true to say that we’re all full of habits. Since we are children, we are taught that it’s good to have certain routines as it brings structure into our life like for example going to bed at eat at the same time each day… Nevertheless, I assume that it can also kill our creativity and spontaneity. With Covid 19 pandemic we had to take a different route and to think out of the box. Working from home and without the possibility to visit customer or to attend congress we had to look for innovative ideas. To give you an example it is during this period that we launched our MICROPTIC Masterclass. My point is that with or without a global pandemic, we tend to have and stay on a strong daily routine, mainly because it is safer. But sometimes trying new things is great! By the end of the summer, we have been asked which kind of Team Building activities we wanted to try; this open question brings a bunch of peculiar and ingenious proposals. I have been very surprised about the creativity of everyone and the general enthusiasm. In our activity sector, innovation is fundamental, therefore from our office we are currently developing new solution for the market. We must stay away from routine.

4. Boost communication & trust

For some Team Building activities, we had no other choice than working together. For a game, the first team was in a black room trying to decipher message meanwhile the second one was on another room listening carefully on what they were discovering because the second team had to write down the message to resolve a clue, on a very limit period of time. During this part, both teams were working under pressure with a common goal. It was intense, and we realised again the importance of having logical organization, efficient communication, and team encouragements. During this activity among others, we were working not within people from our department, so it kind of builds new cooperation bridges across departments or at least it strongers them.

5. Have fun!

Last reason, but not the least:

Could you imagine the Microptic specialists playing on a ball pool during 15 minutes like 5 years old children? Do you think we all ate crickets or worms blindfolded? Have you ever seen your boss trying to imitate Shrek? Have you ever paid attention to the smell of watermelon, Coke, clove or detergent?

It probably sounds unreal, weird, or awkward… Believe me, we had a bundle of laughs! After lunch, we spent a couple of hours on a sensorial centre, it has been an experience unique in which we had to push all our senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smells and even more. Before this activity we had lunch on a restaurant nearby the office, and at the end we played a special game in which the luckiest of us won lovely gifts such as massage, outdoor adventure and even a weekend trip for 2 persons. To sum up, food, game, and good people are always a good combination! We created delightful memories!

“Teamwork makes the dream work”: You must have heard this phrase countless times, but I totally agree with the meaning! Being a team is crucial to reach common goal and to provide high quality service, for me our Autumn Team Building Experience reinforce the feeling of being part of Microptic spirit. I am already eager to see what we will do next time :)

Elsa Delacroix
Export Manager
MICROPTIC S.L.