If you’re eyeing the UK for this year’s team-building, you’re on an exciting path. The UK’s virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) landscapes are trailblazers regarding digital progress, boasting the most rapidly evolving European market and catapulting the country ahead of others. The market is predicted to witness a 78% growth rate for expenditures on new technologies, leading to new developments, amusement parks, and centres where numerous categories of people can find and exploit new hobbies and the well-discussed hyper-reality realm.
As you seek to help employees bond with each other, gain mutual trust, form friendships, and learn the art of collaboration, you’ll discover that VR-based activities present all these opportunities and more.
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VR team building is the newest and most exciting trend
Regardless of age, VR competency, or other specificities, anyone can wear the headset and partake in virtual reality games when the proper environment is found. To increase collaboration skills, some tournaments last a few hours, giving team members time to enjoy the experience through and through. The fun is even more intense as there are numberless options for all sorts of players, from museum trips to criminalistic missions to saving hostages. Is your team split between futuristic, out-of-this-world missions? Or would they prefer the thrill of travelling back in time?
No matter if your group consists of five or dozens of individuals, with a bit of research, you can find a playground that will customise your deal to meet everyone’s preferences. Designed to cater to an ever-rising visitor category, namely team buildings, you’ll see you are spoilt for choice with numberless games, amenities, facilities, and other completely immersive offerings at the park VR, whether you’re into escape rooms, zombie hunts, saboteur expulsions, and so on.
Look for a venue that offers all-inclusive packages with food, beverages, and other exciting combos, and you’ll ensure a day full of achievements in a hyper-realistic setting.
VR’s role in nowadays’ team building
Traditional team buildings where employees meet to engage in different, exciting activities that stimulate skill building are essential, helping prompt creativity, build trust among members, improve collaboration, increase productivity, and promote better conflict resolution. However, it’s fair to say that numerous limitations obstruct the potential of such projects, like reduced customization possibilities, sparse setting alternatives, varying tastes and preferences, and so on.
The introduction of VR in the workplace has removed all these barriers, especially when discussing team building. Such activities can help create a more cohesive workplace, break down the barriers imposed by traditional team buildings, and improve employees’ happiness, which ultimately benefits the company’s bottom line through boosted productivity.
VR team buildings foster environments where psychological safety prompts curiosity, experimentation, and the urge to learn from the mistakes that occur. Hardly can a team draw such valuable lessons in the traditional settings of bygone days, emphasizing why more and more companies opt for VR team buildings organised in reality-like, immersive spaces.
What to expect from VR activities for employees
Fortune Business Insights findings suggest that the VR market will rise to $244.8BN by 2032, with a great contributor to the expansion being represented by workplaces. Numerous companies use AR and VR to train or upskill their employees, whereas others have taken it up a notch and begun exploring the advantages of VR in team buildings, seeking to expand the benefits extracted from such projects and ensure they’re helping employees in their professional activity hereafter.
Virtual reality activities can take numerous forms, but at the end of the day, it’s about the fun your teams have and what lessons and skills they draw from their experiences. Some of the top benefits to reap from such VR-based environments include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Enhancing employees’ social skills, togetherness, and interactions
- Improving problem-solving aptitudes via exposure to reality-like simulations
- Enabling employees to navigate new environments, perspectives, and cultures
- Providing interactive, fun, and engaging ways to explore and learn new subjects.
How to pick the right offering for your team
VR activities vary wildly for corporate team building. Nevertheless, among the top benefits of these activities is that they can be personalised to cater to specific demands. Usually, they’re categorised depending on the accomplishment that you’re looking for, offering you activities that are focused on the following:
- Escape rooms, where team members find clues and solve puzzles to close the case as the clock is ticking. These activities rely on teamwork and improve communication, idea brainstorming, and problem-solving skills.
- VR training simulations are perfect for enhancing skills like decision-making, communication, and problem-solving, as they encourage members to practice lifelike scenarios in exciting environments.
- VR sports are equally popular, having participants battle each other in sports like football, soccer, and basketball, thus building leadership and teamwork skills.
- VR adventure activities where teams navigate hyper-realistic worlds to clear out mysteries or discover aliens and other extraterrestrial life forms, enhancing creativity and intuitiveness.
Whatever you’re looking for, you’re encouraged to opt for VR team-building games specifically designed for your group. These games allow you to tackle different aptitudes through a combination of specifically selected games.
Examples of good practices in big companies
VR tech is being integrated into team-building exercises, and numerous companies have already set patterns. Walgreens, a healthcare and pharmacy company, has employed VR to train customer service employees and workers from other sectors. As a result, the company can reap more benefits from VR-based team-building exercises since a prolific foundation already exists.
Companies like Siemens, Walmart, and Accenture also lead by example with efficient, unforgettable, and exciting activities built via VR. If VR can help enhance vital skills in the workplace, imagine the terrific outcomes generated by such practices in team-building exercises. The shared joy, excitement, and fun make all the lessons learned more memorable and easier to put into practice later in the workplace.
Endnote
As you can see, the emergence of VR has revolutionised the traditional team building weighted down by obstructions and limitations. Your employees’ skills regarding communication, collaboration, decision-making, and more processes improve substantially when they’re engaged in immersive, life-like activities in VR settings developed with the corporate team building in mind, so prepare to be taken aback!
