One of the common reasons HR heads hesitate to propose refreshing team building: fear that staff won't like the new activity and the whole event will count as a failure in leadership's eyes. The worry is grounded, but it is usually exaggerated far beyond reality.
Where the real risk lies
The risk isn't in trying a new activity. It lies in replacing the entire familiar program with something completely unproven. If a company keeps the food, the ceremony and the prize draw as every year, and only adds one new activity to the program, the risk drops a lot compared with replacing everything.
Why binary thinking is usually wrong
Many people assume refreshing team building means picking one of two: keep everything the same or change everything. In reality there is a third option safer than both: keep the familiar base and just add a new layer of experience on top, without dropping any part that already worked.
How to apply it: keep the base, add a new layer
At Infinity Racing, the company keeps the entire familiar dinner in the 115-square-meter premium networking lounge and only adds the indoor kart racing as an opening highlight. If the new part isn't received as hoped, the familiar base is still enough to keep the event at an acceptable level, short of a total failure.
Compared with betting everything on a new format
If a company picks a completely new format for the entire program and keeps nothing familiar, the risk of total failure is much higher. Keeping the base and adding a layer means the company always has a fallback inside the same program.
Small trial before a big investment
For a company that is still hesitant, you can start smaller: apply it to one department first, or shorten the new segment in the first trial. If feedback is good, there is a basis next year to expand the scale and duration of the new experience.
How to present the risk when asking for budget approval
When presenting to leadership, state clearly which parts stay the same and which are the new trial, instead of presenting the whole program as one package of total change. This helps the approver see that the real level of risk is much lower than their first impression of refreshing team building.
Where the risk really is higher than normal
Not every company should refresh at the same speed. For a group with many older staff, or a company culture that leans formal, an activity with a speed element like kart racing should be introduced gradually, for example starting with a short session and making participation optional, instead of applying it to the whole program at once.
On the other hand, a company with a young workforce, used to a fast pace and to trying many different formats, usually has far less hesitation than the person proposing the change imagines. Knowing in advance which group your team falls into helps size the trial sensibly from the start, instead of applying the same risk formula to every kind of company.
Fear that staff won't like it is a reasonable worry, but it is usually out of proportion to the real risk if you know how to trial it properly.
One simple question to assess your level of hesitation
Before deciding the scale of the trial, ask yourself one question: if the new part isn't received well, will the company still hold an acceptable event thanks to the familiar base? If the answer is yes, the hesitation is usually being rated higher than the real risk.
Tell me how hesitant your company is, and I will advise a trial that fits an acceptable level of risk. Send a quote request