Keeping up with The Odyssey

Teambuilding Media

Odyssey Teams | Monthly Update | November

Welcome to the Odyssey monthly update from Ross Field. In these updates, we take a look back at what we’ve been up to as a team, spotlight our amazing clients, provide some inspiration, and if you’re someone who’s in the market to use teambuilding for your business, then we’ve got a strategy for success! Check back every month to see how our team is preparing to go above and beyond for you.

Purpose-Driven Onboarding with CSR Team Building

Turning new hires into high performers begins on their first day. Are your onboarding programs hitting the mark to unlock employees’ full potential and long-term commitment? For the past 30 years, Fortune 500 companies have relied on Odyssey Teams to deliver onboarding and orientation solutions that transform the new hire experience and drive long-term success.

How to Improve Employee Engagement

A whopping $1.9 Trillion in lost productivity in 2023 is worth recovering in 2024. Gallup concluded that only ONE out of THREE employees say they are engaged and know what is expected of them. Engagement is down from a pre-pandemic high in 2020. Globally the impact is estimated at 8.8 trillion in lost productivity. What is it costing your organization? Lain Hensley addresses how to flip the script to capture the lost potential?

Build prosthetic hands in a CSR team building program

If you want to give your team the opportunity to change a life, the time is now! After fifteen years of hard work, we have not only perfected the Build-a-Hand^® Teambuilding program, but we actually have a waiting list of over 3,000 people to receive the prosthetic hands you will produce. Contact us now to take advantage of this offer and help us meet the need.

Don’t do teambuilding. Build your individuals instead

Odyssey Teams, the nation’s leading team building company, delivers experiences that give your people something to think about, something to do and something to feel in a way that connects deeply with who they are, what they do and where they are going.

The Nature of Business – Lessons From a Dung Bettle

Bill John, Odyssey Teams CEO, was living and working from Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa. He had been reflecting on the lessons the business world can learn from nature. His latest teacher is the determined Dung Beetle. Let this short video, filmed by Bill, inspire you to value your resources, hold tight to your purpose and keep on pushing.

Engaging Employees in the Virtual Workspace

In these unprecedented times, it’s essential to stay connected with employees and remain tuned in to their mental and emotional needs. So, we’ve compiled some helpful ways that explain how you can work towards maintaining and improving employee engagement at your organization. These tips come from our Chief Facilitation Officer Todd Demorest who has more than twenty years of keynote speaking and facilitation experience.

CSR: What is Corporate Social Responsibility? 

Teambuilding and some form of corporate social responsibility has been a meeting staple for years. But most companies and the types of CSR events they offer to their employees don’t fully hit the mark. With Odyssey Teams activities, you will think, feel and do. Our goal is for participants to experience intense feelings and emotions they can take back to their work environment while also making a difference through CSR.

What’s in The Odyssey Secret Sauce?

Many people say it’s in the facilitation. This group has been inspiring audiences around the world for more than 25 years. Loaded with tons of experience, our facilitators provide relevant, insightful and engaging experience both in-person and virtually that transcend the sit-and-listen white noise.

Live Program Educational Videos

Build-a-Hand^®

Build-a-Hand^®: An Inspirational Team Building Activity With A CSR Component

If giving back is on the menu for your next meeting or corporate event, this program will, “Hit it out of the park”. The Build-a-Hand^® program is an inspirational team building activity created by Odyssey Teams. It’s about perspective, inspiration, collaboration, and giving back. In a live-setting, our clients build prosthetic hands to be donated to people in need. The experience serves as a business simulation and helps program participants connect to their own work.

Life Cycles

What Is Life Cycles Team Building Program and CSR Give Back Activity?

As the inventors of this bike-building team building process in October of 2000, Odyssey Teams invites you to experience the original Life Cycles™ team building program. The centerpiece of our philanthropic programs is the Life Cycles™ team building program. This bicycle-building event is a perfect example of the ripple effect of “paying it forward.” It’s the Life Cycle of creating something valuable and passing it on. Your team will experience firsthand, the influence their actions, integrity, attention and intention have on their work. They’ll recognize their impact on the lives of their co-workers, families, friends and customers. And they’ll discover how very much they get from the simple act of giving.

Board Meeting

Building Skateboards While Building Better Teams with Odyssey Teams

The Board Meeting is all about business. With a twist and a kick-flip.  Teams receive work orders to design and build skateboards for real customers. Through expert facilitation, teams focus on brand awareness, customer-centricity, quality assurance, time management and collaboration. Each Board Meeting teambuilding kit includes a skateboard deck, trucks, wheels, pads, helmet and backpack. Completed kits are donated to local children who might even surprise the teams and help them with the process. The Board Meeting is a client favorite and is offered as an in-person, virtual or hybrid event.

Team Mosaic

Making Every Piece Count

The Team Mosaic team building program is a powerful experience that demonstrates the importance of individual contribution within a team. Participants receive the supplies to re-create one or more artistic scenes (squares) that are selected from an image that captures the essence of your work – goals, vision, theme, etc. Through expert facilitation, the metaphor becomes the catalyst for dialogue while participants access their creative potential. Every piece matters and is important in the big picture. Just as every team member is important to the organization’s success.

Playhouse Challenge

Create Unique Playhouses for Kids in Need 

The Playhouse Challenge simulates challenges corporate teams face every day while offering a dynamic platform to create a shared vision for the future and reshape company culture. Working in teams of 15, each group receives an ‘order’ from the ‘customer’ and are given all the supplies and tools needed to create a physical structure. During the planning and building periods, teams must develop new ways to meet tight deadlines, work within safety regulations, resolve miscommunications, develop proper plans and execute the collective vision. What emerges are one-of-a-kind playhouses, as well as more cohesive teams. The playhouses ‘built for the customer’ are donated to special guests from local shelters, schools, or other non-profit organizations.

Play-It-Forward

Build Meaningful Connections with Bag Toss

You may have played it under the name ‘cornhole’, but we simply call it ‘bag toss.’ As part of Odyssey Teams’ give back activities, Play-It-Forward integrates an enjoyable game that your team gets to build, play, customize, and ultimately give away. Think paying-it-forward after you’ve put your heart into building something fun. While Play-it-Forward is a wildly fun team building experience, it is unlike others of its kind in that it is expertly facilitated by an Odyssey Teams’ keynote speaker. This ensures your team receives an experience that stays with them long after the program is over.

Live Program Highlight Videos

Build-a-Hand^®

Medix & The Power of a Build-a-Hand^® Team Building Experience

At Medix’s Mid-Year Meeting event in Chicago, IL, Odyssey Teams was invited to provide the keynote and a transformative CSR team building experience. More than 400 Medix employees attended the valuable training event. Lain Hensley, keynote speaker and Co-Founder of Odyssey Teams, lit up the session with a presentation designed to remind the staffing agency how a very simple shift in approach can transform a business. Medix employees were then challenged to use this new approach in a team building experience, Build-a-Hand^®. During this Odyssey Teams program alone, a total of 135 prosthetic hands were built. Each one will be donated to a person in need of a new hand. 

Build-a-Hand^® Program has a Lasting Impact on Shell

Leaders at Shell experience a Build-a-Hand^® program with Odyssey Teams. The insights they share after the program are fresh and inspiring and touch on how this experience brought out the values they want to embody as a company. Build-a-Hand^® is a charitable, CSR (corporate social responsibility) team building program focused on perspective, inspiration, collaboration, and giving back. You will be part of a growing movement to connect your team to the “WHY” of their work, each other, and the world.

Life Cycles

Life-changing Life Cycles Program Brings Salesforce Together

In partnership with Odyssey Teams and Bay Area Bike Project, Salesforce built 79 bikes and donated them to kids in the Bay Area. As part of their Company Kick Off, Salesforce acted on their 1:1:1 model of giving back by improving the lives of local children while experiencing the importance of communication, unity and collaboration.

Board Meeting

The Board Meeting Builds Creativity, Collaboration and Customer Focus for PSI

Performance Systems Integration leaders get on a roll in Washington with our skateboard building program! The group embraced this philanthropic team building event with enthusiasm as they built skateboards for kids in need.

Team Mosaic

Every Piece Counts in Chico State University’s Team Mosaic

Chico State University leaders reset, recharge and reconnect with our Team Mosaic experience! The group of 150 embraced this collaborative teambuilding building event with enthusiasm as they created an incredible work of art.

Team Mosaic

It Takes Every Piece to Make ONE HR Successful

Odyssey Teams’ Team Mosaic program is a dynamic and engaging team-building experience designed to foster collaboration and creativity among participants. Through the collective assembly of a large-scale mosaic, team members contribute individual pieces to create a unified masterpiece. This hands-on activity not only encourages teamwork but also results in a tangible representation of unity and shared vision. The program is perfect for organizations looking to strengthen team bonds and promote a culture of cooperation and mutual support.

Play-It-Forward

Playing-It-Forward with Bain Capital

Bain Capital has played it under the name ‘cornhole’, but we simply call it ‘bag toss.’ Play-It-Forward integrates an enjoyable game that your team gets to build, play, customize, and ultimately give away. Think paying-it-forward after you’ve put your heart into building something fun.

Playhouse Challenge

Building Playhouses for Children with Health Equity

This team building experience, The Playhouse Challenge, was designed by Odyssey Teams and not only inspires others to work together but results in playhouses that are donated to children in need.

Virtual Program Educational Videos 

Virtual Build-a-Hand^®

Build-A-Hand^® to Give-A-Hand

The Virtual Build-a-Hand^® program is an inspirational team building activity created by Odyssey Teams. It’s about perspective, inspiration, collaboration, and giving back. By building prosthetic hands for people in need, your team will be part of a growing movement to connect to the “WHY” of your work, your team mates, and to the world.

Virtual Build-a-Hand^® Philanthropic Activity

The most profound experience with your colleagues virtually is when you realize there is nothing virtual about changing someone’s life. The Build-a-Hand^® program has been embraced by purpose-driven teams who understand the power of community, the power of connection and the power of caring. Thank you for learning how your team can help the more than six-million below-elbow amputees in the world.

Virtual Build-a-Hand^® Program Lifts Others Up

In this video, you see the inspiring efforts of participants in the remote/online-version of the Build-a-Hand^® Program. The Build-a-Hand^® philanthropic team building event has helped deliver more than fifty-five thousand prosthetic hands to amputees around the world. Since March, 2020 it has been embraced virtually with the same powerful impact on individuals, teams and organizations.

Virtual Board Meeting

Odyssey Teams Introduces Board Meeting Program in the Virtual Space

Following the Build-a-Hand^® and Team Mosaic programs that have been embraced virtually, The Board Meeting joins the offerings and clients are loving it. Skateboards are designed and built with loads of creativity. Helmets, pads, and a backpack complete each Board Meeting ‘kit’. The experience is packed with metaphors to kickstart conversations about collaboration, customer-service, quality, teamwork and leadership. Self facilitate with the DIY kits or have an Odyssey Teams expert facilitator lead your session. No matter how you get your Board Meeting on, your team will love it.

Virtual Program Highlight Videos

Virtual Team Mosaic

Virtual Team Mosaic Helps Shell Paint a Picture of Camaraderie

One of the largest oil companies in the world, Shell, comes together in the virtual space to create an impactful and everlasting event symbolic of their company’s innovation and future. With the help of keynote facilitator, Lain Hensley, the 530-person team created an incredible Virtual Team Mosaic. Each Shell employee painted a picture to contribute to the overall image. Every piece counts for Shell as they move forward in this unique time.

Creativity and Collaboration Come Alive for Rosendin with Virtual Team Mosaic Experience

Every piece plays a role for Rosendin Electric, an electrical contractor based in the Bay Area of California. The Virtual Team Mosaic experience lit a spark for this enthusiastic team and led them on a successful journey of discovering better team bonding skills through problem-solving, collaboration, and artisitic creativity.

Virtual Team Mosaic Team Building Activity Helps Oracle Come Together Literally and Figuratively

Computer Technology powerhouse Oracle embarks on the Virtual Team Mosaic experience and creates an image that captures that spirit and vision of their organization. Each member of the 300-person group contributes a small artistic piece to the big picture. The experience helped them trust each team member’s contribution to the company and reiterated the important concept of every individual needing to step back to the ‘bigger picture.’

Client Testimonies

Virtual Build-a-Hand^®

Live or Virtual, Helping Hands Hits it Out of the Park

Over the years, we’ve helped many companies become their best and thrive in the live setting. But Aya Healthcare says our offering of the Build-a-Hand^® program is better in the virtual setting. Hear from them as they explain their Virtual Build-a-Hand^® experience in this testimonial video.

5-Star Google Reviews

We are Proud of our 5-Star Google Reviews and our Clients

What our clients experience and take away from our philanthropic team building programs means the world to us. So, when we see the long list of 5-Star Google Reviews for Odyssey Teams, it makes us very excited and grateful. In this video, you will see several quotes from our beloved clients. We are constantly striving to meet their needs and we will continue to reach for the stars, the Google 5-Stars, that is.

Team Building Programs

What Clients Take Away From Our Philanthropic Team Building Programs

Hear what clients have to say about our Virtual Team Building programs. Each program has a give-back component that is designed as a business simulation to emotionally anchor the specific values and mission of your organization. This creates an impact in real time with real customers who benefit in a life-changing way and affirms your organization’s commitment to corporate social responsibility in your communities.

LN-4 Prosthetic Hand Recipients

Helping Hands Program

75,000 amputees have benefitted from the Build-a-Hand^® program

In this video, we show recipients of the LN-4 Prosthetic Hand. The prosthetic hands are part of Odyssey Teams’ program, Build-a-Hand^®. Through this program, they encourage a lot of team building while giving back to amputees around the world who have been affected by land mine accidents.

See the Difference We Made Together

Build-a-Hand^® by Odyssey Teams is a powerful program that brings deeper meaning to leadership, teamwork, community and life. While building prosthetic hands for people in over 80 developing countries, individuals recognize the profound connections their actions have on customers, colleagues and communities. Watch the video for some amazing life-changing results that YOU, our beloved clients have enabled through this program.

Giving An Amputee an LN-4 Prosthetic Hand in Vietnam

Odyssey Teams had the opportunity to help this man by making him a prosthetic hand through our Build-a-Hand^® team building program. This is a life-changing experience for both him and us.