A corporate teambuilding event, seminar, workshop, program or retreat is an investment in your people and, as such, you can and should expect a proper return on that investment.

How much an event is worth to you and your team is largely a measure of what it will produce for you.

Here are some areas where results are sought:

Improved bonding among team members
Specific tools and skills to improve communication
Increased motivation
Deeper understanding of objectives, goals and vision/mission.
Enhanced ability to manage stress
Improved ability to solve problems
Increased creativity and ability to be proactive
Eliminate conflicts and miscommunication
Eliminate waste
Improve sales & customer service skills
Increase job satisfaction and fulfillment
Increase loyalty to team and company
And many more.

How do we measure changes in these areas, and more importantly, how do we translate improvements in “soft-skills” into improvements in the bottom line?

Measurement

As for tracking and measuring changes, this can be simply achieved by doing pre/post assessment of where each team member rates their abilities in each area.

Typically it will involve a customized survey which can be administered before designing the program, just after the program and then quarterly thereafter to gauge what information is being applied, by whom and how.

The Bottom Line

We can also look at budget items on the revenue and expense sides pre and post to see correlations and determine how much impact a particular team building or training produced.

Depending on the type of team, type of business, income streams, marketing avenues and other factors, as well as the complexity of the tracking model, we can often determine a specific dollar return on investment.

For example, if your team is a sales team it is quite simple to track phone call volumes, appointments, proposals, number of sales, size of sales, and other factors which are direct revenue items.

Also, for example, we can look at sick days, personal days, health insurance premiums, intra-office conflict numbers, and a variety of other parameters to see clear savings that are directly related to the improvements brought about by the team building event.

Another Method to Estimate ROI

Additional methods for estimating ROI include extrapolation based on projected percentage efficiency improvements.  In other words, if people are more efficient and more productive they get more done in less time.  If we calculate the total annual cost of the employees who attend the teambuilding event and then conclude that because the retain and use the information and skills gained that they are even five percent more efficient, we can determine that we saved five percent of their total annual cost.

Example 1:
Executive Team with 8 participants.
Compensation level $250,000 +
Total Invested in this Team’s annual compensation: $2,000,000
Five percent improvement: $100,000 Savings
Ten percent improvement: $200,000 Savings
Event Investment: $20-40K
Return on Investment: 500%-1000%

Example 2:
Full scale company event with 2500 participants already taking place
Add a teambuilding/leadership training event as a marginal investment
Compensation level varies / average: $40,000+
Total Annual Compensation: $100,000,000
One percent improvement: $1,000,000 Savings
Five percent improvement:$5,000,000 Savings
Event Investment: $250K
Return on investment: 400%-2000%

Call us at 1-800-446-4742 to discuss your team building needs
so we can customize your team building or leadership event to achieve your goals.

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