Looking for a fun way to build better relationships between your retail staff? Team building exercises on the shop floor are an excellent way to make the role more engaging and to encourage better collaboration.
Retail positions are known for high staff turnover, with some workers only there for part time hours and others working on temporary seasonal contracts. This can make it difficult for workers to get to know one another, and this can leave individuals feeling very alone at work.
To help break the ice and make sure everyone feels included, managers can organise regular team building activities. Make it a weekly, monthly or annual thing and reap the long term benefits of more cohesive retail teams.
Why is team building so great for retail staff?
Retail staff need to be able to collaborate seamlessly and communicate with ease. This will happen a lot more naturally if the team knows each other a little better than their roles will allow them to.
Staff don’t have the time to bond on the shop floor as they will often be working alone, but as part of a wider team. They need to spend their time supporting customers, not chatting and getting to know each other. But it’s vital that they can have the chance to do this in a professional environment.
Making time for team building can make your shop staff more productive by making it easier for them to collaborate on tasks.
What does a good team building exercise look like?
The first rule of building a team building exercise is that it needs to be fun. If your workers aren’t having fun, you’re going to struggle to get their buy-in. For a challenge to be fun, it needs to be easy to grasp and quick to complete.
If the challenge is too hard or feels too much like work, the team won’t enjoy it. If the challenge is really hard, it could have the opposite effect of being demoralising for workers.
It also helps to introduce a sense of competition. Splitting your retail staff into teams and having them compete for a prize can foster a greater sense of team spirit. You could split them into register staff teams and shop floor teams to create a rival spirit.
The team building activities don’t have to be related to their work, but you could combine team building with training. For example, you could have a competition for who can complete a shop floor task the fastest, or who can gift wrap a difficult item the fastest and the best.
You can also take it outside of work and attend a fun social event like social bingo or trying an escape room. There are also long-term challenges you could try, like raising money for charity with a long distance bike ride, for example.
Examples of team building for retail staff
If you’re ready to start building some fun rivalries and making a day on the shop floor feel a little less ordinary, try these team building games.
- Get active – encourage your workers to get active by signing up for a long distance bike ride or a fun run. This will help to raise the profile of your business while also raising money for charity. Working together as a team means that your team will have to ensure they all cross the finish line at the same time.
- Get creative – take common waste items from the shop floor and turn it into a creative challenge. You could give your team boxes and tape and challenge them to build the tallest or strongest structure. Pick a heavy item that the structure has to hold and then set them loose with a short time limit.
- Get personal – two truths and a lie is a great icebreaker and team building exercise that will encourage conversation between your workers. They’ll have a chance to learn more about their co-workers by sharing interesting facts about their lives.
- Get to work – another fun way to encourage team bonding is with frantic challenges related to tasks that are commonly completed on the shop floor. Have staff compete to dress a mannequin the fastest or to gift wrap and awkward gift and get it to a specific part of the store against a time limit.
