To best prepare for the start of the 2025 academic year and welcome your students or new employees, integration must be at the heart of your strategy. Successful onboarding not only immerses recruits in the organization’s culture, but also boosts their motivation, commitment, and performance from the outset. In this article, discover why integration is crucial, how team building can maximize its effectiveness, what benefits can be gained from it, and what the new generations are looking for. Team Connect will also offer you ideas for concrete activities for a 100% successful start to the academic year.
Whether welcoming new students to a school or new employees to a company, the integration phase is crucial in helping new arrivals feel comfortable.
Structured integration allows new arrivals to immerse themselves in values, codes, and processes. Students or employees will quickly gain confidence in their new environment, reducing anxiety and strengthening their sense of belonging.
Well-managed onboarding improves cohesion, satisfaction, and productivity among new arrivals. It prevents absenteeism on the school side and excessive turnover risk on the company side.
Creating positive initial interactions between students, colleagues, managers, etc. makes future collaborations more fluid, promotes open communication, and strengthens mutual trust.
The benefits of team building are very real. Organizing this type of activity can be very beneficial in several ways, facilitating the integration of students or new employees at the start of the 2025 academic year.
Presentations, meetings, and organizational charts are no longer enough. Fun, immersive activities facilitate informal encounters for new arrivals. A team-building event is therefore an opportunity where it is easier for participants to bond.
If you want to organize a team-building event to welcome your students or new employees at the start of the 2025 academic year, it is essential to define a goal: integration and development of team cohesion, information sharing, etc. Collective mission exercises (such as our Discovery Mission experience) or challenge-solving exercises strengthen cohesion and alignment around the organization’s challenges.
By involving new employees/students in a group activity, you can give them the opportunity to engage with the existing team spirit and make it easier for them to find their place.
Schools and companies do not always succeed in integrating their new recruits effectively. If your organization is keen to welcome new arrivals in the best possible way, it is important to promote this to candidates to make them want to join you :
To go further : Using team building as an internal communication tool: how does it work ?
Immersive and practical experiences
Joining a school or company should be a participatory process: solving challenges, discovering the environment, and collaborating to feel engaged.
Meaning and purpose
Especially for Generation Z, integration must explain the “why” behind the mission, i.e., what social or environmental impact it has, for example, or the overall meaning of the role within the organization.
Interpersonal skills and networking
Highlighting opportunities to develop a professional network from the outset is essential to make newcomers feel supported and valued.
Digital and hybrid mode
Your organization’s ecosystem must be digitally oriented (e.g., online training modules, digital interactions (online messaging, intranet, video meetings, etc.), or even choose a hybrid mode (face-to-face and remote working) for employees.
To help you with the onboarding phase for your new arrivals, Teams Connect offers 3 types of team-building activities that can be perfectly adapted to your HR/educational objectives :
An immersive experience where teams of students or new employees explore a territory or site while completing challenges. An activity that develops curiosity, independence, and collaboration.
2. Urban Race
An urban orienteering race combining quizzes, discovering points of interest in a city, and creative challenges. The perfect team building activity to stimulate team spirit, knowledge of the area, and a sense of belonging.
A sporting and symbolic adventure where each stage completed represents a step toward personal and collective integration. This activity is ideal for building bonds, motivating participants, and overcoming initial apprehensions.
Discover our integration activities and get a head start on building a memorable onboarding experience today !