Springtime is about renewal, refreshing, rejuvenation, re-energizing, and new beginnings. Spring reminds us of what Psychologist Bruce Tuckman calls the Forming stage of group dynamics, which is directly applicable to company cultures.
In the forming stage, team members meet, leaders facilitate introductions, and trust and respect start to be built. Anytime the group is altered – maybe with the addition of a new person or when someone leaves – it’s important to come back to this stage.
Remote and hybrid workforces have created a more challenging environment to facilitate this forming stage, but that shouldn’t deter you from being intentional about planning events that help bring your team together for these important Forming stage functions.
Making Friends
Our favorite part of the Forming stage is forging friendships. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Minnesota, close friendships at work “increase productivity, friends are more committed, communicate better, and encourage each other.” (Source: Harvard Business Review)
Additionally, Gallup’s data shows having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including improvements in profitability, safety, inventory control, and employee retention.
While you can’t force any of your employees to become friends, you can create environments where they are more likely to get to know each other’s personalities and have fun together – the basis of any friendship. Games are the perfect platform to do this.
Helping Veterans, Starting With Their Own Staff
Our client, Veterans Alliance, has a remote team of people – many of them veterans themselves – dedicated to finding career opportunities for ex service members from every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. Their team works remotely from all across the United States, but their leadership understands how critical it is to bring them together to simply have fun and get to know each other.
They planned a week in America’s Finest City and brought together their national team to help members get to know each other and build trust.
Veterans Alliance hired Grin Events to host three events in a single day. We think this is a little wild, but we went with it!
Here are the events we served up:

In It To Win It

Game Night

Game Show
The Results of Fun
We're Here To Help
Figuring out fresh ways of facilitating social interactions can feel intimidating, so we’ve created a menu of events to help with just that. We want you – the event planner – to be able to show up and also participate in the fun without having to worry about the details.
Here’s how it works:
1) Contact us in whatever way is easiest for you:
- Email: smile@grin.events
- Website: web form
- Phone call: 619-972-4746 (we’re old school and actually prefer this method!)
2) Tell us what your event goal is and we can suggest an event type.
3) Let us know how many participants to expect and pick a date and time.
We take care of the rest!