Teamwork game for team building -: A case study in a pharmaceutical company

Simulation games provide a promising challenge for personnel and organizational development. The paper presents an innovative tool called Teamwork Game, which is meant for team building and teamwork training. The aim is to increase team members' skills to work in teams and to promote team's functionality. Teamwork Game is a board and card game having question cards on essential group work themes (communication, common goals, group cohesion, fairness, autonomy, leadership). A team of employees answer questions, solve problems and discuss together with the help of a game facilitator. They analyze team experiences in debriefing and start creating team's operating principles. The paper focuses on a case study in a pharmaceutical company where the Teamwork Game was applied as a part of broader organizational development. The results showed that the participants (N= 113) perceived the Teamwork Game as an inspiring and useful tool which offered a new way of participating in development activities. The Teamwork Game promoted the team members' constructive discussions, sharing opinions and solving problems, which also lead to development suggestions and their implementation.