Employee team building activities for children’s activity providers

When you first start hiring instructors and other team members for your children’s activity business, you might feel a bit overwhelmed with everything that you need to do. Not only is hiring employees a time consuming process, but also then you need to think about training and retaining your new staff members.

Spending time on proper training and team building can help you retain staff more effectively. Employee retention is important for children’s activity businesses. When parents and students can develop a strong, long-term relationship with the instructors and other team members, you will experience higher student return rates and better overall experiences.

At Sawyer, our goal is to help children’s activity providers run their businesses more efficiently and effectively. In this guide, we will outline tips and strategies for employee training and retention as well as some of our favorite employee team building activities. Your employees, and customers will thank you!

How to train employees

Before you can dive into retention and team building activities, you need to develop a strong employee training program. Did you know that 91% of employees stay for at least 1 year when organizations have efficient onboarding and training protocols, according to TinyPulse? It all starts here.

Use these tips to properly train your employees

Provide adequate documentation. Before getting started on training, give your employees the information on paper. This will help them follow along as active listeners and refer back to their notes later on. Documentation is also helpful for the trainer because it keeps everyone on the same page (literally).
Utilize up-to-date best practices. When preparing your training materials, do research on current standards. Even if you have years of experience, it is important for you to understand what has changed and update your materials accordingly.
Make it interactive. Training employees is important work, especially when they work with children. Include activities that engage your staff so they remember what is being said. Build in review sessions throughout the training period and after and test employee knowledge with fun Jeopardy-style competitions.
Be open to questions. It is important for your employees to feel comfortable in their roles and working with you. Plus, when working with children, ample training can truly be lifesaving. So, make sure you are continually making space for questions throughout the training period (and beyond!). Establish an open-door policy with your staff members so that they know they can go to you with additional questions whenever they come up.
Build in reviews. Even if you are working with seasonal staff members, it is extremely important to set aside specific time for reviews. Assess your team on what they are doing correctly and what they could improve upon. Then, reintroduce training to help them grow.

Looking for more support on camp counselor training specifically? Check out our guide!

How to retain employees

The work doesn’t end after training. You need to continually motivate and nurture your employees to reduce turnover. In this section, we will outline employee retention strategies you can use to keep your team members motivated and engaged.

Create a mentorship program. Being a mentor provides leadership opportunities and being a mentee provides additional training that newer or younger employees might find helpful. Mentorship is a great way to retain employees who might have otherwise left because they did not feel supported or autonomous.
Include employees when you create goals. Setting reasonable goals is an important way to keep employees motivated. But, when you include your team in setting these goals, they work even better as a motivation and retention tool. When they feel more connected to the big picture, they are more likely to stay.
Make reviews more frequent and interactive. Especially with a business that has busy and quiet seasons, employees will benefit from reviews that happen more often. Weekly or bi-weekly review sessions can help empower employees to grow based on feedback. Make sure they are mutual as well, so the employees can review you, too.
Reward success with promotions, bonuses, and praise. Build in promotions, bonuses, raises, and opportunities for shoutouts so that employees can be recognized for doing a job well done. This acknowledgement of good work is a great one of our favorite employee retention strategies. Plus, make them feel loved during the holidays! Check out our guide with holiday gift ideas for employees.
Build in opportunities for team building. When your employees feel connected to one another and the business’ goals, they are more likely to stay. Keep reading for employee team building activities!

Ready to retain your employees? Check out our full guide with tips and strategies to reduce turnover.

Employee team building activities

One of the best retention tactics is to help facilitate the creation of bonds among your employees (and yourself!). Setting up employee team building activities during the training period and at regular intervals can help. Try some of our favorite employee team building activities to get started.

Take a class together. As a children’s activity provider, you certainly know the power of learning something new as a group. Set up a class for your team to explore together. Try cooking, hiking, dance, pottery, or something else!
Play a game. Set up trivia, board games, or even a scavenger hunt as a team building activity for your employees. Depending on the number of employees, try to create teams of people who don’t usually work together so they can get to know one another. Friendly competition is a great bond!
Try an escape room or another puzzle. Puzzles and other collaborative problem-solving experiences can help your team feel more connected and comfortable with each other. Then, they can take what they learned from working together in those low stakes situations and put them to use when teaching and interacting with students.
Take a hike. Getting outside in nature can help your team bond, have fun, and get their minds off of work. When you remove your employees from their usual settings, they can get more comfortable with each other and form bonds.
Share shoutouts. This is a great employee team building activity for employees who have worked together for some time. Gather everyone together and ask them to share a shoutout about one of their teammates. The positive reinforcement will bond your employees and motivate them to keep working hard.
Provide opportunities to share knowledge. Offer lunch and learn sessions, adult show and tell, and other moments where employees can share their passions. When team members learn about each other as more than just fellow employees, they create stronger connections.
Host a brainstorm. Invite everyone, regardless of their role, to participate in a brainstorm session to solve a problem. Employees who don’t usually work together will enjoy the experience of seeing their teammates in action. Plus, when people are further away from a problem, they might have even better ideas than those who look at it everyday!
Volunteer. Sign up for volunteering opportunities as a group. When employees work together to solve a greater good, they are more likely to bond. They will also leave the experience feeling great and leaving a positive impact on their community.
Join a team together. Intramural sports can be great employee team building activities. Just make sure that you are not forcing anyone to play who might not feel comfortable. Instead, focus on the fun aspect and the bonding experience that comes with playing on a team together.

With the above tips, you should feel ready to train and retain your employees with team building activities and so much more. If you are looking for some guidance on hiring for small businesses, including how to write a job description and knowing the right time to hire, check out our resources.

If you are looking for guidance on managing and running your children’s education and activity business, the team at Sawyer is here to help.

With our suite of tools, like custom forms to record allergies and t-shirt sizes, flexible payment options like gift cards and installment plans, and seamless scheduling and registration on any device, Sawyer saves business owners 28 hours per month. If you are ready to spend less time on admin and more time doing more of what you love, see how Sawyer can help with a free trial or demo.