Community
February 11 / 2020
Our Cloudworker BarcelonaTours breaks down five reasons why you can find all the fun of a modern team building activities inside a coworking space like Cloudworks.
BarcelonaTours is our Cloudworker at Cloudworks Sagrada Família. This time they tell us why working in a coworking promotes team building, through their experience with our spaces for 3 years. They will tell us about what it has meant for them to be part of the community and the opportunities achieved.
Team building activities used to conjure up images of pushing the chairs in the office into a circle and playing boring cookie-cutter ice breaking games. You might have even had to stand up and do “trust falls”, and take part in role-playing, pretending to be an irate colleague or a difficult customer.
Thankfully, this has changed, and team building experiences now can involve complex and engaging activities that will help bring people together in a whole new way. Gone are the days when a shared disdain for team building events is what was uniting a team – now it’s genuine enjoyment and fun.
Traditional offices can also be accused of being a relic of the past. More and more businesses, small and large, alongside freelancers and remote workers, are choosing to rent a spot in a coworking space instead of finding a whole office to rent, or, in the case of individuals, working from home.
Apart from financial reasons (you will find renting space in a coworking to be far more reasonably priced than finding a whole office complex), companies and individuals alike are discovering that coworkings themselves can provide many of the characteristics of a good team building activity. In this blog, we break down five reasons why you can find all the fun of a modern team building activity inside a coworking space like Cloudworks.
A great team building activity will push you to do something new and exciting that you haven’t done before. When it comes to freelancers, if you have always worked from home or a café, the idea of entering an office space with so many new people could be daunting, like the first day of school! You might also have these butterflies if you’re moving a small business from a private office to a coworking.
Cloudworks offers a warm and welcoming space to begin building new relationships, both professional and personal, and you’ll feel at home in no time. Just as in a team building, getting started can be the hardest part, but once you get the hang of things, you’ll forget all about those initial nerves.
Once you’ve got the lay of the land, you’ll find that…
Coworking spaces, by their very nature, bring people together. As the old saying goes, “it takes all sorts to make a world”, and it takes all different kinds of people and businesses to make a coworking. If you choose a table in a shared area, you could find yourself sitting next to someone that works in a field entirely different to your own. Cloudworks already hosts everything, from coders and web developers to SEO specialists and graphic designers. Just as a good team building can bring together people that work in all different fields, a coworking space can do the same thing every single day!
Barcelonatours.net is a perfect example, as we are sitting right next to a beauty company, something completely removed from event planning and team building in Barcelona. In contrast, you might find two coders sat together, three graphic designers sat together, four SEO specialists sat together – the possibilities are endless!
A sense of community is created by all these different people sharing the same working space. Whether it’s becoming friends with your neighbour or meeting someone in the coffee machine and sharing a laugh about Mondays, or better yet, Fridays, the opportunities for social interaction with new people is always there. This brings us nicely onto point number three.
A new environment and new people, of course, bring new opportunities. During a team building event, meeting people from different parts of a business and/or different companies is part of what helps fuel the activity. If companies wanted everything in their business to stay the same, then there would be no need for such an event! Encountering people in these scenarios leads to richer conversations from the offset, as usually you will need to know each other better to reach a common goal.
In a coworking space, similar connections can be made on a day-to-day basis, all you need to do is ask around! Whether or not you find a collaborator, new ideas can come from the strangest places. A conversation with someone in the coworking might give you some inspiration on how to tackle a problem you’ve been having – they, in turn, might be inspired by you! This person might know someone that could help you, and vice versa. Just as with team building, a discussion with those around you has the potential to help everyone perform better and reach either common or personal goals.
As a business, BarcelonaTours have found many collaborators in the coworking to help us with various aspects of our business, proof that networking in the office can lead to new business relationships. You could find the exact person you need to help along the next step of your business journey by simply engaging with the coworking community. You might also find that, through these new connections, you’ll find some more of number four.
The ultimate goal of team building activities motivates your team and foster a positive attitude. In a private office or when working from home, finding the motivation you need to work hard every day can be tricky. Coworking is a far more dynamic environment and you’ll discover that just coming into a shared office space can bring new drive and purpose into your work.
People will arrive at different times with different ideas and there is no feeling of the general drudgery of a nine-to-five (even if those are your working hours!). You will be surrounded everyday by other people that are working towards their own goals and, as we’ve previously mentioned, they might be able to help you reach yours. This cultivates a motivational environment in which no two days are the same and there’s always something new to discover.
And what’s the point of all the hard work if you can’t enjoy number five?
Finally, Cloudworks gives all its members the opportunity to celebrate, whether there’s a special occasion or not! Celebration is a key part of team building as it’s the moment where everyone can relax completely and take time to assess, process and, most likely, have a good laugh about everything that happened! Whether you have won or lost, come somewhere in the middle or taken part in an activity where your whole team worked together, everyone coming together at the end to relax and celebrate being together is vital.
Forget just attending the Christmas party to catch up with colleagues once a year; Cloudworks offers opportunities every month for people to get together and toast to…well, anything! For example, once a month they hold CloudBeers, inviting everyone in the office to come and drink a free beer (or two!) and chat with their fellow workers. They also have several big parties a year, such as Carnival (in February), Halloween (October) and, of course, the Cloudworks birthday party! These are a chance for people to get to know each other in a fun and relaxing environment, which can be crucial to forming lasting friendships in the office. These events are especially useful for freelancers, many of whom might have previously worked from home or from cafes. It’s a ready-made, feel-good opportunity to push yourself to meet new people in the office.
And there you have it! Five reasons why working in a coworking can have all the fun, engaging and motivational aspects of a good team building activity.
To organise a great team building activity, get in touch with BarcelonaTours.net, based at Cloudworks Sagrada Família. We guarantee your team will finish their activity feeling like new relationships have been forged, old ones have been renewed and, of course, filled with fresh motivation and inspiration. Visit our website for more information.