The Ethics of Team Building

Since the subject has come up a few times, I thought it might be interesting to take another look at the ethics of Team Building exercises as commonly practiced in the United States. Like most concepts developed in the Human Resources side of the field, most of these have come to be viewed with a rather jaundiced eye by veteran employees. There's a real temptation to see such exercises as more Stupid Management Tricks - things that only come up because some senior manager read a book about building better teams and decided to try one of the ideas from the examples section in the back. Or worse yet, things that are only being implemented because some idiot at Headquarters decided to take the money that would otherwise have been spent on bonuses for this year and hire some idiot consultant, who made these idiotic suggestions. Which management now has to use to make it look like they got something useful for their money...

Certainly, anything that requires the employees to give up any of their own resources (time, money, etc.) in order to make your business more profitable is not likely to be well-received, nor should it be. More to the point, it's not an ethical choice. Even if you think a company softball league (or bowling team, or whatever) is going to be a fun activity that also brings people together and improves their teamwork, if you are requiring your people to take time away from their lives and families (or, worse yet, requiring them to pay for facilities rental and equipment) you are effectively making them pay for your improved performance. Making these activities voluntary and providing company sponsorship to cover league fees and basic equipment changes everything, making this exercise into a perk instead of an onerous requirement - and helping to identify the team players in your organization from the lone wolves...

I'm also opposed to requiring public performance from people who don't enjoy performing in public. Studies have repeatedly shown that people are on average more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying - requiring people to do something they'd rather die than experience is not a good management decision, and here again, requiring them to practice OR perform on their own time is not an ethical choice. Here again, making these activities voluntary, or combining them with a company activity held "on-the-clock" can change the entire situation. But in both cases, people will argue that even having such activities is unfair to those who can't play sports, are too shy to perform in public, don't have the time or the stamina or the nerve, or whatever. How do we accomplish these same goals in a way that is completely inclusive?

Sometimes the best ways are the simplest, of course. I've seen team-building exercises that were as simple as a contest to see which work group could have the fewest on-the-job accidents, or turn in the most assignments on deadline. If that's still too much to the company's benefit, you could resort to buying lunch for the crew, or the "no-ranks" conversations I've mentioned previously, or just having regular meetings where the employees are encouraged to present their concerns and get real (unrehearsed) answers in real time from the management team. But the bottom line question is always going to be the same one: is it ethically correct to require the employees to expend time and effort in order to make the company more successful? Does it matter if they are getting paid to perform the exercises? What if they are given higher raises in return for higher performance made possible by the exercises? And what if they are all stockholders (as part of an employee stock-purchase plan) and therefore benefit directly as well as indirectly from the higher performance?

It’s worth thinking about…