Enhancing team performance through adventure

Let me spend a moment debunking the myth that team adventure challenges are not worth the money. Want an ROI? Let me oblige while showing you how these challenges can enhance team performance...

At the moment it feels like "team building" is still a platitude. I've had enough chats with organisations who love the idea of putting this at the forefront of their culture but "don't have any budget so what can you do for free".

So, let's put some return on investment considerations in to start. These are based on proven and evidenced commercials but some of the metrics can be tweaked as needed.

This is also based on the IT industry and in USD currency but the model does apply globally AND this was CFO approved so while it may not fit your business, the model has been agreed as a principle.

Let's start with an IT wage of $78,125 as an average wage and a fully loaded cost of $117,188 when it comes to replacing that person when they leave. An average attrition rate could be 10% making the cost of attrition in a 950 person organisation over $11m!

Using the same cost the average percent of wage for sickness is 4% so based on the same 950 people that's a cost of just under $3m to the business.

I'll revisit this again at the again.

Let's talk about teams and how what we do as Aspire Adventures can enhance performance. This is based on our relationships with some of the biggest brands in the world.

1. Working with some companies we have built adventure challenges around helping improve communication and improved communication is reduced friction including enhanced customer satisfaction.
2. A lot of our challenges will have problem solving embedded in. Teams that can solve problems can get products to market quicker, fix issues or close deals sooner. This can create more time or do more with the same in terms of team numbers.
3. Adventure challenges push people outside of their comfort zones and when teams work together in this controlled way it builds more trust and empathy. This helps teams during tough times to pull together and work cohesively towards common goals and objectives.
4. When teams and people are pushed out of their comfort zones, especially when empowered to that course of action, this builds more courage. When there is more courage people will make bolder, braver and more calculated decisions taking the burden away from senior leaders who can focus more on strategy.
5. What we do, in our challenges, is help control safety and the environment for success while ensuring people push themselves without breaking. This has an incredibly positive output of building resilience. With more resilience people are a lot more comfortable to lean in to tough times.
6. As part of some of our challenges we have actively talked through and emulated the processes around role allocation and task delegation. We work in high risk, high consequence areas around the world so our processes are tested, rigorous and proven. This massively helps people in work to reduce overwhelm and focus on core competencies.
7. A lot of our work with organisations has also included charity fundraising. Feeling like people belong to a culture of care is paramount to loyalty and reducing attrition. Less disruption in the team is directly linked to enhanced performance.

As well as the above we can consider the physical and mental wellbeing aspects and leveraging these challenges as part of employee recognition. I'll touch more on this in future newsletters but important to recognise.

Right, let's circle back to the ROI and still based on 950 employee's in the IT space but remembering this model can apply across industries.

All of the above will contribute to less people leaving so let's move that needle from 10% attrition to a conservative 8%. That saves just under $2.3m...

Let's reduce that sickness from 4% to 2.5% (less people going off sick) and you can save just under $1.2m...

That's an incredible total saving of over $3.3m so if you invest $300,000 in adventure challenges with Aspire Adventures you're getting a 10x return!

The question now is...

What is stopping you from investing in this?

As a business we can make this simple.

DM me and let's make a plan.

If we get this moving now you can be reaping the benefits in this, or your next financial year.

Let's do this.

Live limitlessly,

Jason