Creating a good team-spirit with afterwork activities

The day before the recording of this episode, Mattias and Svea attended iGoMoon's "Julbord" (Christmas dinner) together. This fun event inspired Svea to talk more about the team activities outside of work and why they are important.

Julbord

Firstly, Mattias explains the concept of a julbord in his own words: "Basically you eat a lot of food". Literally translated, a julbord is a "Christmas table" and you can probably best imagine it as a buffet with many tasty and traditional Swedish delicacies.

Having fun at work

Before the whole team went to the julbord, everyone was meeting up at the office and having fun together. Besides dressing up with decorative Christmas articles such as Christmas tree hats and reindeer antlers, the iGoMoon crew played "Secret Santa" together. Everyone was supposed to organize a secret Christmas present each, that would be put on a table together with all the other presents. Afterward, everyone needed to roll the dice and was allowed to choose one of the presents on the table once they'd rolled a 1 or a 6. This game was played in multiple rounds with additional rules and caused a lot of laughter and definitely awakened the combat mode in the majority of players. After that game, everyone was in a good mood and definitely ready for the Christmas dinner!

Creating a good team-spirit

However, the Christmas party is not the only outside-of-work event. After iGoMoon reached the "gazelle status" e.g., Mattias took the whole team on a conference trip to South Africa where they, amongst other things, met the people behind "Project Playground" and learned more about the organization iGoMoon is supporting. Additionally, regular after work activities including activities like "frisbee golf" are on the agenda. Mattias believes that people who have fun and laugh together will definitely become an even better team and develop better communication.

In connection to this, he wants to point out that even though these events organized by the company are great - an even more important indicator of a healthy culture is when the team takes initiative and organizes their own activities.

Caring about company culture

He also thinks back to some episodes when there was less engagement on that level at iGoMoon than there is right now. Back in the day, some people would plan something but only a few people from the team would respond or participate and the suggested activities. He believes that one reason for that kind of low engagement could have been that those people might have been in completely different stages of their life and did not have much in common.

Another conclusion he can draw when there is a significantly low engagement in the team is that most people might just be working at iGoMoon to pay the bills and don't care so much about the culture. Mattias takes this very seriously and explains that he, as the leader, is responsible for hiring the right people with the right attitude in order for the whole team to flourish. The energy and motivation to spend time and have fun together should not come from the top and go down, it either is the foundation that should be right.

💡 EPISODE TAKE AWAY
A sign of a healthy company culture is when people take initiative and want to have fun together without it being forced on them.

What activities do you organize for your team?