Customer Service Week Means Food
October 8, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
While I’ve mentioned before that pizza isn’t team building, pizza IS a great way to spend a little time and money on making your team happy. After all, everyone eats something.
For my team, customer service week means a chance to eat and share food and share time with others. It’s a great time, and while it takes a smidge of work, the payoff can be huge!
Food for my team – I’m bringing in healthy food for my team; fruit, yogurt, tea and coffee, so they have something to eat in the morning that they don’t have to worry about it for at least one day. Some of my friends tell me a cake or pie or pizza is a good thing for their teams. Get to know your team and find out what they like to eat…then get them that. If your team is a health-minded team like mine, feel free to copy me. The key is asking your team what they want.
Food and drink for others – I’m going to buy plenty of food, not just for my team, but enough food and drink so other teams can come visit my team and get to know them a little better. For some reason, people love to talk when they have food, so I’ll invite down the rest of the IT department (after my team has had time to eat their share), the HR department, a few of the firm’s other client facing departments, and some other leaders too. All of this to share the experience with my team and do a little team building by knowing what others they don’t often get to interact with in person look like.
Build something social (or food for no reason) – Sometimes (though not this year) we do ice cream bars, we have food contests that require outside judges, or we just bring in food for no reason. It’s another excuse for folks to bring in what they like and share it with others. We get all sorts of things shared this way; pea pods, carrots, sugar free desserts, new flavors of coffee and tea, and (my personal favorites) banana and zucchini bread because someone had leftovers and wanted to use things up.
Do you do food days for your team? If so, what’s your experience been with it? Does it bring your team closer together?
If you haven’t done food days before, why not try one this week?
cc licensed flickr photo by M0les: http://flickr.com/photos/m0les/219980646/
Phil
I love using food to bring my teams together. Actually, I am on my home tonight I decided that I should bring in breakfast tomorrow since it is Friday, and the team has had a tough week. I believe that it is important for a team to gather over food, or drinks, occasionally. Like we bring our families around the dinner to table to connect, this also happens within our teams at work. I also love to do potlucks with my teams. You get to know more about individual team members by what types of food they enjoy making. For a more economical option, I also use mocktails. During each staff meeting I bring in a new non-alcoholic drink, to allow the team a chance to unwind and talk a little before our meeting. I share each month’s recipe, and encourage the team to bring any suggestions for the next meeting.
Kara