Corporate Culture

Team building can be done in many ways. Personally I like the idea of creating good bonds between people. Friends tend to not want to let each other down. Then again they might not take things too seriously if the environment is too relaxed and friendly. This should however not really be a problem in a professional environment. I find it interesting to see how team building and social activities are managed at different companies and different sites. Although I think I missed a few at my current position I had the pleasure of attending some. So far they have mostly centered around two things and been performed in two ways.

One is the company “fika ” on Thursdays, a afternoon coffee and tea time where time is taken to eat some pastries and drink a cup of something together. This is an extremely common occurrence in Swedish working life. It´s also an important bonding ritual that cannot be neglected of one want to maintain good relations. Usually people take turn to bring fika or bake something. I´ll try to get back to the nuances of fika another time as it´s much too complicated and stretches into social dynamics way out of this specific context. 

The other one are shared activities with some sort of food and drinks involved. These tend to be either management organized with the company paying and planning it or “employee organized” where people chip in and contribute to doing something together. For the second alternative has mainly been “knytisar” of different sorts. A knytis is literally a potluck and can range from very organized to just bring something and let’s see what we get.