What better way to kick off 2015 than by reigniting your team’s passion for working together? Team-building activities don’t have to involve a weekend retreat at a mountain resort—they can be simple, affordable, and just as effective. After all, the goal is to put your team together with structured activities they can use to see how everyone ticks!

Jump-start your team this year with these five activities designed to bring employees together:

• Offer ride-alongs. Build inter-department support and understanding by scheduling employees to “ride along” with team members from other departments. Employees are generally curious about life in other departments, and a ride-along creates the opportunity for employees to learn about each other’s jobs. Understanding the functionality of other departments can only make employees do their jobs better. Ride-alongs, like job shadowing, also allow employees to explore different career paths.
• Establish a book club or a hobby club. Help employees bond through shared personal interests! Encourage employees to form special-interest clubs, which can meet on-site during lunch or after work. The possibilities here are limitless, and can involve crafts such as knitting or beading, online game-playing, or photography and video editing. Find out employees’ interests and help them find each other.
• Facilitate mentoring. Mentoring is a strong way to build the team, whether it’s one-on-one mentoring or group mentoring. Where one-on-one mentoring helps build the relationship between two employees, group mentoring offered by company leadership builds the relationship between an entire team, while working to strengthen their skills. It also has the added benefit of employees learning new skills and ideas, which they can discuss and apply together.
• Sponsor lunch outside the office. It’s amazing what happens when you take employees away from their daily grind! Under the mariachi music at the local Mexican restaurant, “Joe from Marketing” miraculously transforms into “Joe who loves to play golf,” and he finds common ground with fellow golf-loving coworkers. By sharing a meal outside the office, employees are able to cast off their daily burdens and become free to see each other in a whole new light.
• Organize group volunteering events. Group volunteering lets employees work together for the greater good in an effort that will leave a lasting impression. Gather employees together to build a house for an underprivileged family, or to run in a charity race, collect canned goods, or even to sponsor a family for the holidays. Working together to make a difference in people’s lives is a powerful way for employees to build camaraderie.

Team-building is all about producing results by working together, both cooperatively and as individual cogs working in the same machine. The bigger picture only comes into focus when everyone rallies together to make it happen!