Team Building

There is an average of 50,000 bees in a hive. Bees travel more than 60 miles per day at 22 miles per hour gathering nectar and pollen. It takes one million flowers to produce one pound of honey.

What, you wonder, does this trivia have to do with meeting planning?

Well, these are the answers that participants in the Los Ninos VolunTourism team-building program will readily supply when quizzed after an experience building bee hives to benefit indigenous workers in Mexicali, Mexico.

Increasingly, planners are turning to socially responsible team-building options to replace traditional corporate bonding activities, such as ropes courses and beachfront retreats, because such activities bring something new to the table, namely a lasting impression on attendees.

Meeting planners attest that team building with an emphasis on helping the corporation as well as giving back to society—be it a community of impoverished people or endangered animals—is becoming very popular.

Laurel Coote, president of the Torrance, Calif.-based Laureli Group, a meeting and event management company, promotes the involvement of what she calls "meetings with a conscience."

"We have a big world in need and we should be cognizant and give back as much as we can," she says.

Community Kickbacks

Many companies turn to team-building activities that directly benefit their local communities.

A few years back, Coote had a client who was interested in working with the popular nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity to build a home for a needy Southern California family.

"One of our corporate clients has an annual meeting of their top management and they had an interest in participating in some type of community service team-building activity to give back," Coote says. "They wanted to set an example with their senior management to encourage the rest of the company to do the same."

The company gathered 500 people together in Long Beach, Calif., for the project. Habitat for Humanity facilitated finding a location that would provide homesites for 16 families, according to Coote.

"It was a pretty impactful thing and it was really cool and a lot of fun," she says. "We worked one afternoon and every person participating touched the project somehow."

The company was so excited that it wanted to come back for a repeat experience the following year, but due to inclement weather it was forced to cancel. Rather than opting to substitute the activity with a traditional team-building exercise, the company decided to continue with the community service trend and set up a fund-raiser in Las Vegas to benefit the victims of the South Asian tsunami. The company matched all employee contributions and the event was a hit.

"From my perspective as a planner, just because of the rain, they didn't lose the community service concept of giving," Coote says. "It was collaborative, very much team building and doing something for the greater good."

Los Ninos, the aforementioned California-based community service organization, has a branch called VolunTourism. Director David Clemmons helps with the bee hive-constructing team-building activity.

Clemmons travels around the country to corporate sites and facilitates the group construction of bee hives for the benefit of women in Mexicali, Mexico. During the activity, a small group of employees gathers together for about three hours to construct a bee hive that is then sent back to Mexico to aid in funding the salaries of female workers in Mexicali.

"The purpose is beyond the scope of who you are as a company, and you get to tie in your corporate responsibility to that," Clemmons says. "You get to feel good when you walk out of it."

He continues that in some instances he has the opportunity to bring a woman who benefits from the profits of the bee hives to the team-building activity for participants to meet and spend time with.

"When we actually bring one of the women from the cooperative so she can actually speak to the folks about what they are doing, it adds that purpose factor," Clemmons says.

One company that participated in this activity is the Dedham, Mass.-based corporate headquarters of Papa Gino's and D'Angelo restaurants. The company recently employed the Los Ninos VolunTourism activity as a part of its annual operations council conference in Newport, R.I. Clemmons brought along a woman from Mexicali who would directly benefit from the constructed bee hives.

Celeste Contois, senior vice president of human resources, explains how valuable the experience was to her team.

"Each team assembled a part of a bee hive and then was able to put them together," Contois says. "Then we allowed them to hear from a woman who actually lives in the community. We found out what this activity does and how it impacts the lives of the women."

Unlike other team-building activities, Contois says this one was an easy pitch to the company's senior management.

"It was aligned with the company's values and it was something that the company had not seen before," she explains. "With something like this, we are not only building the team aspect, but doing it with a significant purpose."

Contois adds that positive attendee feedback was off the charts.

"The employees thought it was the best team-building activity they had ever done because they were giving back to a community," Contois says. "It gave people a sense of how they can get involved and really make a difference. Here we are in Newport, R.I., and we are reaching all the way to Mexico."

Another team-building company focused on community involvement is called Executive Edge, headed by the husband and wife team of James Willis and Miriam Ricketts.

Based in Cleveland, the outfit frequently travels to the site of the proposed team-building activity.

Several years ago, Willis and Ricketts traveled to New York to facilitate an activity for Ernst & Young's senior management team. After a short introduction during which employees remained unaware of what they were getting themselves into, Executive Edge explained that their team-building task was to feed and clothe 1,000 people in 24 hours.

With this monstrous task presented to them, the employees of Ernst & Young broke off into about 10 teams to do something for the greater good, including going to the Honduran Embassy in New York to help warehouse workers get supplies off their trucks.

"In 24 hours, they quadrupled the workers' speed," Willis says. "The dialogue that developed between the community and the firm changed both entities."

Another group that worked with Executive Edge opted to join hands with Habitat for Humanity to help with a housing project in Baltimore. Participants helped destroy rotting houses and build new ones.

Willis says that the process of demolishing and rebuilding homes serves as an appropriate analogy for the demolition and reformation of a company.

Yet another group that partnered with Executive Edge designed an in-flight fashion show to fund some children of the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

"They were going to use the money to pay for the fuel to charter a plane from Philadelphia to Orlando to give the children a Disney experience," Willis says.

Ricketts adds that attendee feedback was amazing.

Animal Lovers

Team building with a cause also revolves around aiding animals and the environment.

According to Fred Cannan, co-founder and COO of Naples, Fla.-based Odyssey Experiences, one such activity involves carrying an alligator through the Florida Everglades.

Odyssey Experiences, a training and team-building company, has a partnership with the Ngala Private Game Preserve, a 35-acre wooded preserve where numerous species of wild animals roam. Cannan reports that about 30 percent of the proceeds from all Odyssey training and team-building activities go toward helping Ngala.

In an activity called Alligator Alley, participants are situated deep within the preserve on a pathway, standing between 20 to 30 feet from each other.

"We take a live alligator about three-and-a-half feet long, with a handler nearby, and we give our participants several facts about the alligator," Cannan explains. "They then take the alligator, armed with that information, and walk with the alligator and give it to the next person. That is where we get the pressure; we are taking them out of their comfort zone."

Cannan says that after the activity, the participants sit and discuss the day and try to come up with ways that they could have better dealt with the pressure generated during the experience.

Another team-building activity that Odyssey Experiences offers participants is a tour through some of the 70,000 acres of wildlife at Ngala. While walking through the vast acreage, facilitators teach attendees about flora and fauna indigenous to the Everglades region. In the middle of a lesson, there may be a surprise.

"We try to stage animals along the way," Cannan says. "In the middle of a mission, they could walk into a zebra or a giraffe. We do this to distract them, and it works."

Cannan ties these types of experiences back to the work world by stressing that even though distractions happen in the workplace, you still have to move forward.

Another environment-friendly team-building program is offered at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort & Spa, located in the middle of a 1 million-square-acre world biosphere national park with not a sign of human life for 20 miles in all directions.

Situated on 700 acres in British Columbia, Clayoquot brings something different to the table: untouched land and the opportunity for team-building participants to be a part of preserving the area's environment, including helping local animals.

As a part of the resort's Environment Legacy Program, General Manager John Canton explains that attendees have the opportunity to participate in the restoration of animal habitats. According to Canton, a recent group from Austria came to Clayoquot to participate in a team-building activity to help restore salmon spawning beds.

Prior to the activity, participants were taught how to use tools to clean area river valley beds and to replace them with native grasses and vegetation, directly aiding in future salmon reproduction.

"No salmon had spawned in that stream for over 60 years," Canton says. "But two months after the exercise, there were 2,000 salmon swimming into the stream to lay eggs."

Other activities Clayoquot offers team-building participants include whale, eagle and bear research.

Canton says that attendee feedback is always positive.

"The satisfaction people experience is incredible," he says. "I have worked in different team-building events for quite a while, but this one leaves a state of satisfaction that will stay with these people for the rest of their lives."

Charitable Challenges

Although trends in team building seem to be pointing in the do-good direction, pitching these programs and ultimately carrying them out comes with its own set of challenges.

Monetarily, some companies have a hard time understanding why they should spend money on a community service activity when employees could just volunteer outside of work.

Executive Edge's Willis says that it is difficult for some companies to think of community service as something that you pay for.

"They don't see that you get some value from the activity," he says. "It is difficult for us to convince some organizations that it is something that they should pay for."

One solution to this problem is the option of taking a tax write-off for such an event.

"Any company that conducts a team-building activity along with an NGO (non-governmental organization), can get a tax benefit," Los Ninos VolunTourism's Clemmons says. "For the bee program, it is 100 percent tax-deductible. When they find that out, they are thrilled."

If a tax write-off isn't an option for the company, it might consider coupling the activity with positive public relations.

"It does give your company the ability to display good PR," says Papa Gino's and D'Angelo restaurants' Contois. "We did let the newspapers know. The story that came out was a community service type of story, and from a meeting planner's perspective, there is a community relations-type benefit."

According to Ginny Sukenik, CMP, president of Cleveland-based event planning company GS Special Events, another challenge is making sure that everyone is able to participate.

"Finding an activity where there are no physical limitations can be difficult," she says. "The activity shouldn't alienate anyone or draw attention to their weaknesses."