Company Team-building Efforts Can Be Productive

After Hank’s Fine Furniture company officials finished a quarterly manager’s meeting in February 2002, employees faced off against each other in sumo wrestling matches.

Roy Sanders, a manager of a Hank’s store in Florida, didn’t want to put on the inflated sumo suit, but high-level managers told him he must, according to the lawsuit he filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court in Little Rock.

When it was Sanders’ turn to battle, he shattered his ankle.

Hank’s contends the matches were held as a team-building exercise and Sanders’ injury should be filed as a worker’s compensation claim, said Sanders’ attorney, Sam Sexton III of Fort Smith. Sexton said the event was held hours after the mangers’ meeting and should be viewed as a recreational activity and his claim should be filed as a lawsuit.

Both a claim at the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission and the lawsuit are pending.

While Sanders’ case may turn out to be a team-building exercises gone bad, management professors agree that team-building exercises generally are productive.

“They might not be if they’re poorly designed [though],” said Marian Crawford, a professor of management at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

UALR Management Professor Tom Tudor said one of his goals for a team-building exercise would be to encourage employees to know each other on a deeper level.

“People are less likely to go the extra mile” if they don’t know who they are dealing with, he said.

What Works

Tudor said an inexpensive team-building exercise would be to give employees $8 to spend on lunch. But the catch is they have to take only one person from another department. He said if you start having more people tag along, it’s not as intimate and the exercise fails.

That’s why at an office party, “I don’t think there’s any type of team building at all,” Tudor said. Most people end up mingling with people in their departments, he said.

Other team building exercises that have proven successful include karaoke, job rotation and role playing, Tudor said.

“I think whatever you do, you want to try and create teamwork, not competition,” he said.

Tudor frowns on companies holding volleyball games featuring departments against departments. All that does is create more barriers between the departments.

Crawford, the UALR professor, said companies have to overcome the fact that the American culture is geared toward individuals, which results in employees generally not working well together in groups.

“Americans are individuals,” she said. “If you look how people are socialized in the United States ? it’s individual performances.”

In Japan though, where some managers got the idea for group work, its culture is focused on the unit.

“So teams work well in Japan,” Crawford said.

She said successful team-building exercises are ones that encourage employees to talk to each other. Team building is something that constantly needs to be monitored and worked on, Crawford said.

If the group of employees can come together as a team, the company will see improved communication and productivity.

It also might help lower turnover.

Skippy

At Unilever Bestfoods North America’s Little Rock plant, which turns out Skippy peanut butter, teamwork is vital if the plant is going to meet its annual goals for safety, quality and productivity.

If the plant meets its goals, each of the approximately 150 employees will receive a salary bonus of 5 to 6 percent.

Employees “have a sense of ownership and responsibility about the success of this plant,” said plant manager Patrick Mathiew in an e-mail in response to questions. “They work together to fulfill the requirements, and they rely on the strengths and know the weaknesses of each other.”

The company, which has its American corporate office in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., is focused on the team.

“There are no ‘jobs’ in the Skippy system, only tasks to be done,” according to a company information sheet. “Every employee is a ?team member,’ and a member may be assigned to any task delegated to the team, which that member is qualified to perform.”

Before each shift, the employees huddle and talk about what’s going on in the plant.

“They take pride in producing in a quality product and understand the effect that their performance has on Skippy,” Mathiew said.

Hank’s Furniture

Sanders, the former Hank’s manager who is now a Realtor living in Maumelle, said in his court papers that on Feb. 19, 2002, he went to the company’s corporate meeting being held at a DeVall’s Bluff lodge.

At previous meetings, Hank’s Fine Furniture president Henry C. Browne or other mangers had pressured employees to partake in “hazing” events, such as the initiation of new employees through the use of alcohol, Sanders said in the lawsuit.

In the evening after the meeting, Browne and another manger directed Sanders to participate in sumo wrestling with other employees, the lawsuit said.

Sanders said he tried to back out of it, but he felt he might be fired if he didn’t wrestle.

Reluctantly, Sanders wrestled and shattered his ankle.

After the injury, Sanders said a Hank’s vice president told him not to file a workers’ compensation claim because the injuries were outside the scope of his employment duties.

Sanders left the company in early 2003 and filed the lawsuit in October.

He is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

Hank’s attorney, Alfred Angulo Jr. of Little Rock, said one of the central issues of the litigation is whether the incident was a part of a corporate event or a recreational activity.

Angulo declined to comment further on the case because it’s pending.

Hank’s court papers, though, said that any injury Sanders suffered was a result of his own negligence “for failing to exercise ordinary care under the circumstances.”