The 14th February is nearly upon us, the most romantic day of the year or a marketing strategy to double the price of roses, increase the cost of dining out and another reason to buy a card? We can only imagine that there are a number of men out there scratching their heads and frantically planning an over the top way to impress a loved one.

Here at Out The Office it has been a big talking point of what to do, what to get and how much to spend. With it being on a Saturday it makes it a little easier but may mean spoiling them all day. If you still haven’t got those lovely gifts yet don’t worry there is still time and just remember that the best presents are sweet, simple and come from the heart where you really do show your true feelings for the one you love.

Some may say Valentines Day is packed with pressure, it can bring out the best and worst in your relationship. So pay attention to what your partner likes, don’t go for any cliché tat and don’t get the worst gift they have ever seen as that could definitely ruin your relationship. So in the office we have gone through some ideas of what we think are good, bad and what we have received in the past, which was supposed to impress us.

Below is a list of what we think you shouldn’t get those special loved ones;

• Love Tokens – I am still shocked anybody gives these out but they are still out there – lets hope these are only used as a joke
• Recycled Card – A girl in our office once got a card with another girls name crossed out and hers written underneath – romantic
• Tandem Glove/ Joint Onesie – If you have seen these then you know they are ridiculous, they may bring you closer but very impractical.
• Name Tattoo – Putting somebody’s name on your body is a big call, there has to be a lot of trust there to get this done.
• Fake Flowers/ Petrol Station Flowers – There is nothing worse or more of a waste of money than wilting flowers or even fake flowers, opt for
something that will make them smile (yes we do know it’s the thought that counts… It’s not all about overpriced roses you know!)
• Sugar free sweets or chocolates – Most have a sweet tooth but when it’s the sugar free option it’s an insult – nothing says “I’d love you more if you weighed less” like an artificially sweetened treat.
• Gym Membership – If you got this as a present most people would appreciate it but then again is there a hidden message, does he/she think I’m lazy?
• Joke Book – Receiving this can be an insult if you think you are funny already – time for new gags?
• The boot – You may not be happy in your relationship but giving someone the boot on Valentines is not the one and there should be deadline for before and after.
• Finally getting a loved one nothing on Valentines is not going to go down well at all so be prepared and get something meaningful. Gifts don’t have to be pricey or even cost anything at all.

All we suggest is something simple and sweet, cook a meal or take your loved one out and you can’t beat a lovely bunch of flowers (fresh).

Hope some of this may help and all we want is to see those smiles back on people’s faces because they have been spoiled by a love one.

Last weekend was my first sighting of those Christmas Decorations – it has started……..

I love Christmas and everything about it but there is one thing I know every office needs help with so here at Out The Office we decided to give you a few pointers for that dreaded office Secret Santa.

Once again the dreaded Secret Santa is back and you can already hear all those office workers wracking their brains to find that perfect gift which will prove to be the best in town. If you are currently struggling to get any inspiration like many others then we have come up with some tips of what NOT to buy your co-workers.

Chocolate Body Paint – This is well renowned as the gift of choice by the office perv every year since 1994. It’s not funny, nobody likes it and it is tacky.

The Over-budget Item – Trying to hard is not great and spending too much money does not make you look great – maybe your getting your fair share of that salary cake.

The Cheap Option – The complete opposite, this person is bitter about their low wages – only allowed if they get the boss!

The Freebie – We all get free stuff all the time, it has been sitting on your desk for 6 months, re-gifting this is not the one, it really does take the biscuit.

The Thoughtless gift – being unimaginative and ignoring all the fun of Christmas by popping to the local shop and getting a voucher – bore off!

The Subtle Hint – my mother always told me that if you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything at all, even if said with a present so freshening body spray or weight loss manual is a big no-no.

The Insult – Clothing is probably not a safe bet, guessing someone’s size is a recipe for disaster.

The Funny Present – Unless you really know them then don’t get that funny gift, hair dye, anti-wrinkle cream just may not be funny in their eyes.

The last minute gift – You really need to put some thought into these presents and there is no excuse for just grabbing something out of the stationary cupboard.

The Christmas Gift – I know it’s Christmas and it is Secret Santa but normally these gifts are given out so late then it just gets wasted and can only use it for a week or so.

All of us here at Out The Office say get organized now and Have a HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Self-confidence is one of those qualities that everybody desires. Some have it and some don’t. Self-confidence is extremely important in almost every aspect of our lives, yet so many people struggle to find it. Confident people inspire confidence in others: their audience, their peers, their bosses, their customers and their friends. Gaining the confidence of others is one of the key ways in which a self-confident person finds success.

So why is self-confidence so important in the events industry? Let’s imagine you have a new lead and it’s your job to persuade this potential client that you can deliver an incredible event that’s miles above and beyond the capabilities of any other events company out there! Most people are reluctant to get behind an event that’s being pitched by someone who is nervous, fumbling, and overly apologetic. On the other hand, if you are confident and you speak clearly, hold your head high, and answer questions assuredly, you stand a much better chance of succeeding. Even if you don’t know the answer to a curveball question, simply admitting that you are unsure rather than trying to avoid the subject can clearly demonstrate that you have self-confidence. The key to being confident when dealing with a client is to be thoroughly prepared for any eventuality. Make sure you understand exactly what it is they want, exactly what you’re selling and exactly how you can best describe it to its full potential. If you’re positive on this before the meeting, your self-confidence will naturally shine through, even if you don’t perceive yourself as a confident person.

I’ve been running teambuilding events for over 11 years now and most of my experience has been leading teams of people through a series of engaging activities to test their creativity, teamwork and dedication. However, I’m sure everyone who’s been in the industry for as long as I have, at some point has been asked to run an event that was pretty dull and boring. Unfortunately, this occasionally does happen. If a client has specifically requested a series of very basic activities, it can become quite challenging to hold everyone’s attention and make it really exciting and entertaining! This is where self-confidence comes in handy, because if you believe in something then you can lead other people to also believe in it. If you use your self-confidence and deliver a brief that clearly shows that you think this is the best activity in the world, then people will start to engage!

The events industry often runs to a tight deadline. When you arrive onsite for an event, you know you have a certain amount of time before the field has to be set and everyone must be in place and ready to begin. Occasionally the client will be running ahead of time and ask if we can start the event earlier, so being friendly but firm with all the event staff is crucial. If you have self-confidence, have a solid plan in your head and communicate with your team coherently, you can carry out an effective setup. If you lack confidence and don’t really know what’s going on, you will find it difficult to keep you team motivated and willing to work hard for you. They will start doing their own thing and setting up wherever they want and the whole event could be doomed from the start. Make a plan. Stick to your plan. Execute your plan. Stay confident!

Self-confidence is a mind-set that only you can induce, and it will help you in all areas of life, not just at work. It can make positive things happen for you and it makes you feel so much happier about yourself as a person and how your life is going. People will give you more respect and you will find you get more out of life because you are more confident to go look for it. So how do the experts suggest we can teach ourselves to be more self-confident?

Self-confidence is simply a mind-set and we are ALL capable of accessing it. You need to take stock of where you are, think about where you want to go, get yourself in the right frame of mind for your journey and commit yourself to starting it and staying with it. There are 4 basic things that professional life-coaches remind you to remember:

1. Stay away from negativity and bring on the positivity.
2. Pull your shoulders back, raise your head and smile.
3. Get rid of the negative voices in your head.
4. Be prepared

The good news is that self-confidence really can be learned and built on. And, whether you’re working on your own confidence or building the confidence of people around you, it’s well-worth the effort!

Today I have been reading a number of articles online and I saw a company advertising a job with the slogan ‘Exciting jobs are hard to come by. Get paid to do what you love!’ My first thought was that the headline really did grab my attention and made me read further (Boss if you are reading this, I am not looking for a new job don’t worry!). It then got me thinking about my job here at Out the Office and how I really do appreciate my job. Waking up every morning, I like knowing that I will be productive today, and this is because I do actually enjoy it. I look forward to coming in every day and pushing the business to the next level. I have a real passion for events and seeing that I have done everything I can to put a smile on the clients faces. Passion is not something you follow; passion is something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.

I really do think it is important to have a job you enjoy and be in a company that allows you to flourish. My job pays well (unless the boss is reading, in that case I would like more) and I have job satisfaction, which really shows through our results. We have great clients and we receive fabulous feedback. Can you really have both? Of course you can!

The conventional thinking of money and job satisfaction comes from a theory developed by the psychologist Frederick Herzberg. He proposed that there were two sets of factors in the workplace. One group, known as motivators, cause satisfaction. These are things like achievement, advancement and interest in work. The other group, called hygiene factors, cause dissatisfaction if they are absent – and salary is part of this group. So, if you don’t earn enough you will be dissatisfied. Lucky I love my job eh! There is a huge element of achievement in this job; putting on a class event while at the same time changing people’s opinions of teambuilding.

So let me tell you a little story, I was at Bournemouth University studying Business and specialising in Project & Operations Management (I am not sure why I picked it now but it seemed the right choice at the time). After University I had no idea what I wanted to do, I didn’t really have a path and I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. You could say I was letting time pass by. I had previous experience in hospitality so I started working for a popular restaurant chain, but I knew my heart wasn’t in it.

After working there for a while I quickly started to lose any interest that I had, the passion wasn’t there but I continued to work hard and do a good job. I used to dread the thought of going to work, the drive in seemed so long and I used to spend my shift clock watching, thinking when can I get out of here. I started to feel a bit depressed and thought why am I working in something that I literally hate as it’s affecting me in a lot of negative ways. It finally hit me and I thought there MUST something better for me out there. The very next day I handed my notice in and the countdown begun.

It may have been a silly move to leave a job and not have anything else confirmed but it felt right and the pressure was released. I felt happier instantly. Looking back now it was the best decision I have made in my life!

The next stage was to get a job I enjoyed – something I wanted to work hard for. I managed to fall into working in events and started to work freelance doing a number of fun and exciting events around the UK. I was doing a fun team building event and it hit me, (I had my lightbulb moment), could this be the career for me? What’s not to like? Your outdoors a lot, meeting different people every day and having fun while getting paid. I had a meeting with the MD and we got on well and the vibes were good, (guessing she fancied me). I got a full time job and I was a very happy man. The next stage of my life begun and the passion grew from there.

2.5 years on and I am still working for the company and I’m now Head of Events. I love my job and it feels weird to think of life beforehand. I even met my girlfriend here and we have a beautifully little rascal because of it. I still look forward to working every day and the team we are building here is great fun. I really do think it is important to love your job and everyone can sense how enthusiastic we are because of the passion we possess. We all want to do a great job and push the business on!

So what do I love about the events industry and the job then? Is it the many laugh out loud moments we have? Is it the variety and creativity of the job, or is it seeing our positive impact and how people blossom? Actually it is all of these plus many more. Here at ‘Out the Office’ it has been great to see the rise of the company from where we have come to what we are looking for in the future and a big part of that is because the employees love their job.

We have been looking for a new placement student recently and we have been really trying to convey why we love the job and why they should be interested in working here. There is never a dull moment and a lot of satisfaction is to be had in creating something from scratch and seeing the success to the end. We only want employees that will fit in to our work family and that will appreciate the exciting job that comes with it.

The lesson is – enjoy your job and be happy!

Over and out!

Team Building Events for Startups

If you’re a startup you may think that it is too early to think about a team building event. You’re likely running a hectic schedule and cost pressures mean that cash is a bit thin. But what if you could make a wise investment in your team from an early stage that helps to foster relationships and promote social cohesion?

Getting to know each other

Depending on just how new your team is then you may have a collection of staff who know nothing of each other as yet. What better way for them to get to learn to know each other than in a purpose built event that challenges them to learn about each other and use their skills for the overall challenge. A team building event is an ideal way for people to learn about each other and get to know them better to build relationships that will last.

Social cohesion

This is the glue that sticks teams together and teams that play together stay together. The strong interpersonal bonds that can be built by a team building event promote a healthy dynamic in your team and for new teams in the startup world this is important. Most companies think of team building in long term teams. This can be to try and solve issues on occasion, but what if you could prevent some of those issues from happening in the first place by creating strong relationships?

Trust

There is overwhelming evidence that trust is important in teams and that team building can help to promote it. We rely on trust in all of our exchanges with others and this is even more important in teams. Our team building challenges often rely on the need for trust and teamwork. We build these with the development of trust and social cohesion in mind.

Shared experiences

The shared experience of a team building event gives your new team a background structure that means they have something in common. Our somewhat tribal minds mean that we seek out those with which we have something in common and the promotion of this can result in much better and more importantly productive teams.

Long term benefits

Though it is hard to see the benefits for the long term there are many. The enhancement of interpersonal relationships of your team will result in fewer HR headaches down the road, it should also result in lowering turnover of staff as socially connected staff are far more likely to stay with you. These results can save a huge sum over the years following the event and can easily outweigh the cost of the event itself.

So if you think that your startup would gain something from a team building experience then get in touch. Our specialists can start to build an event around you and your team and produce the ideal event for your business. So get in touch today and let us get started.

Creative Team Building

Improve the creative side of your team building exercise by organising creative events designed to test their creativity. Get in touch with us today

If you’re looking at team building events then why not consider letting your staff free with their creative side? We offer several options that can allow your staff to let their creative juices free. From making cupcakes to making cocktails we offer the chance for your staff discover their creative side. So let us take care of your requirements and make a memorable event that will leave your team with stories long after the event. These shared experiences can be the glue that holds teams together, add to this the challenge of learning something new and using some creativity, you have a powerful mix of all the right ingredients to give your staff a day to remember.

Holding a creative event for your team can help bring them together in a creative endeavour that will test their skills and perhaps even teach them new ones that they can take away and use in their own lives. The events that we hold also allow your staff to develop their interpersonal relationships so that your business can reap the rewards of enhanced relations between your staff, the strong bonds will help to build trust and respect between your team and will reap dividends long after the event day itself.

Lifelong skills can be learned on our creative events and this can mean that your teams will be highly involved and entertained in the process. This high level of involvement means that your teams will gain as much as possible from the event and will be sure to still be talking about it for years to come. So let us be the reason that your team is closer than ever.

The enhanced social aspect of these events means that staff can relax and enjoy themselves in comfortable surroundings. Our expert staff work hard to create the perfect environment so that your staff can enjoy their creative event and gain as much as possible. We are well versed in holding these events for companies just like yours so we will have the right solution to your needs.

How we can help

Our team of specialists are trained to be able to tailor an event to the specific needs of your business, so why not get in touch today and see what we can do for you. We serve London, Wales, Manchester and indeed the whole of UK. We will work extremely hard to provide you with the perfect event for you and your team. So contact us and let’s get started! We are guaranteed to have the right solution for your needs.

Team building study

Now more than ever, the notion of trying to build a great team is sharply in the focus of business leaders. It is part of the reason that they come to us in order to use our team building events. In this article, we show the vast benefits of enhanced team integration and why team building events are popular and effective at building productivity in teams.

The need to improve productivity has prompted a great number of studies into the area of team-building as academia attempts to answer the burning questions of what makes a good team and how the process can be “hacked” in order to make it repeatable and teachable. Nowhere is this truer than at MIT, their Human Dynamics Laboratory has identified the group dynamics that underpin high-performing teams. They have now discovered that these dynamics are measurable and can importantly be taught to teams in order to make them stronger.

Communication

It seems obvious, but teams that performed well had an advanced level of communication within them, they appeared to have a unique style that was shared. Researchers found that these patterns of communication were common in high-performing teams and were linked as a strong predictor of the success of the team. The researchers gathered the information by wiring up workers in teams in differing sectors. They collected a huge data set that allowed them to break down exactly what it was that separated top performing teams and the also-rans.

Team work

The strong and unique communication that was present in the top performers showed that teams with more energy and engagement had better communication and thus created better teams. Researchers noted that teams that spent longer together outside of the work environment had better interpersonal relationships and were higher performers. Researchers concluded that staff should be encouraged to take breaks together to foster this enhanced level of communication. Indeed in the study, a bank that moved its call centre staff’s breaks found huge improvements by getting the staff together on those breaks.

Productivity

The implementation of quite simple strategies can garner a huge result; during the study, the researchers were based in the call centre of a bank, after adding in the tips from the researchers they’re forecasting a $15m a year productivity increase over their 25,000 staff.

The normal thinking has been that staff only work for rewards, while rewards do constitute part of the picture, the work environment itself and the strength of the team overall can be of huge influence in engagement and productivity.

If you want to foster some of this into your team, then why not book one of our team building events? We can help to create a setting so that your staff can get to know each other a little better in a creative and fun environment. Give your team a productivity boost and get in touch today.

• Communication
• Team work
• Productivity

What to look for in a leader

Building a good leadership team is essential for any business that wants to achieve. Whether an office manager or project leader, all leaders require certain skills to help them interact positively with other team members. Skills that you’ll need to look for when hiring for leadership roles in your company include:

Communication

Leaders need to be able to explain goals and tasks to employees in a clear and succinct manner. They must master all forms of communication, from one to one conversations, to motivational speeches to an entire workforce. As well as this, they must be able to converse effectively via phone, email and even social media.

What many people don’t understand is that a big part of communication involves listening, and this means that leaders need to establish an efficient flow of communication between team members and themselves. As such, leaders should ensure that they’re regularly available to discuss issues or concerns with employees.

Motivation

Leaders should be able to motivate workers to go the extra mile for a business. This could involve building self-esteem via recognition or rewards, or by offering staff the opportunity to take on new responsibilities. Employees should be made to feel like they’re a vital asset to the company and that their hard work is appreciated. Good leaders should be able to identify effective motivators for encouraging productivity in the workplace.

Positivity

Positivity is an important trait of a leader as it can help to create a happy and relaxed work environment. This is especially important during busy or stressful periods when constructive attitudes are essential. Employees will be more likely to want to be at work and will be more willing to out the hours in to achieve results for the business.

Responsibility

A good leader will be willing to take responsibility not just for the successes of a team, but the failures too. They should accept the blame when something goes wrong, as well as celebrating when things go right. They should look to devise clear solutions to rectify issues. If employees see their leader blaming others, they’ll lose respect for them, which can be disastrous for a business.

As a manager, you’ll always be keen to improve leadership skills in your workforce. So why not invest in corporate team building activities? Team building events can target leadership specifically, allowing you not only to identify those employees who possess (but who may not have yet had the opportunity to display) leadership traits, but develop existing skills in this area. Targeted leadership team building games provide situations where leadership skills can be developed, practised and enhanced.

Contact our team building experts in the UK to find out how leadership activities can benefit your business. Team building providers work with businesses in various industries, and so you can be sure that they can deliver a service that’s fully tailored to your company’s requirements.

Top 4 tips

• Communication
• Motivation
• Positivity
• Responsibility