Happy new year to everyone! We hope you all had a relaxing and refreshing time at the beginning of the year. This period of time is always a good chance to clear your head and think about what the new year will bring, hopefully surrounded by supportive family members and friends.
2021 may have been a hard year for a lot of us, but now that we’re in 2022, it’s hard not to get optimistic about the new future. There’s a lot of projects and events that we’re looking forward to at Invite Japan, and new goals that we want to implement.
So, in the spirit of the new year season, in the following blog post we’ll share what we’re excited about in 2022. Let’s ring in the new year and get 2022 off to a great start!
1. Expanded workshop program
One of our main areas of focus for 2022 is to expand our workshop programs. Our workshops are supplemental lectures and activities that are based around a specific theme or topic. Currently we have workshops about psychological safety, team roles, and anger management.
We are working to add more topics and models to the mix, like PX2 and 5Ys. We also want to design more activities so that we can really focus on areas like communication and trust, as well. That way, we can respond more specifically to individual teams’ needs.
As we continue to research new team building models and topics raised by the shift to hybrid teams, our workshop offerings will increase as well. We enjoy learning and expanding our area of expertise, and we want to share that joy with all of you! in 2022 and beyond.
2. Tabitantei
With the success of our newest online team building game, Secret Agent: The First Mission (see below), we want to go back and fix up our first one, Tabitantei. It is still a popular game that our clients enjoy. However, we learned a lot from creating our newest game. Plus, we now have Jet, who is our awesome stack developer.
So, we’re looking to make Tabitantei as smooth and cool-looking a game as Secret Mission, and bring our whole online game lineup to the same level.
3. More “Secret Agent: The First Mission”
Speaking of Secret Agent, we are still beaming with pride at how good this online game is. Since we released it only in December 2021, we haven’t had that many opportunities for clients to try it. So we’re looking forward to having more teams play this exciting and relationship building online game in 2022!
4. Youtube vlogs
As we mentioned in one of our blog posts looking back on last year, 2021 was a really critical year for our blog. As we look forward into 2022, one thing we want to do is to expand the ways that we communicate with our clients and team building community.
One of the ways we want to do this is by increasing video content on our Youtube channel. Currently, we are working on turning some of our most informative blog posts into easily watchable and engaging vlogs.
Hopefully, this will allow more people to learn about the importance of team building, as well as all the useful analysis of new team building concepts and ideas. We’re very excited for you to watch them soon!
5. 2022 Winter Olympics
We did just have an Olympics in Tokyo in 2021. But since it was rescheduled as a result of the pandemic, we get another Olympics in February 2022. While this one isn’t in Tokyo, it’s still a chance for the world to come together as a global community. Which, as an internationally-minded company with staff from around the world, we think meshes well with what we’re trying to do.
At the very least, we can forget our troubles and focus on the excellence and spirit of sportsmanship of the athletes on the screen. So let’s have another round of Olympics, please!
6. More in-person events
This is perhaps more of a wish, and something outside of our control, but oh well. Hope is a fine thing to have at the beginning of a new year.
2021 was another year of lockdowns and social distancing. Luckily, we were still able to offer high quality team building events remotely, and so a lot of our activities continued to be held online. However, there is something special about in-person events and being able to feel the joy and emotion of teams in the same room as you are.
That’s why we’re hoping that this year is better, and that teams have more of a chance to participate in team building activities in-person. We want more teams to try our Suitcase Mystery games and outdoor scavenger hunts, and experience first-hand how amazing these games really are.
Of course, we know that online team building has become a permanent fixture of our lineup. But our hope is that teams get to try all the options available. It’s a hope for the world too, that we can overcome this hurdle and move forward into new and better times.
7. Leaning deeper into hybrid
One of the major themes of 2021 that we talked about here in our blog was the shift to hybrid work. Because hybrid work contains such a wide variety of possible modes and models, it’s really fascinating to explore what hybridity has in store and how to construct the hybrid work model that best fits your team.
We can only assume that hybridity will continue to be a major topic in 2022 as well. Perhaps more so, hopefully, as teams come back together and the world really emerges into a post-pandemic world.
So, this year we will still focus a lot on hybrid teams. There’s so many areas of interest here, like equity and onboarding, and how hybrid teams can retain team unity and better utilize team roles. Plus there’s the lingering question of how long-term hybridity actually affects team productivity. It’s sure to make 2022 an interesting year for our blog.
One more thing: In-person meet-ups and parties
At the end of 2021, Invite Japan had an in-person drinking party in Shibuya. It was one of the first times we had all been together in person (some of our team members have joined since we shifted to online work), and it was wonderful. Here’s hoping that 2022 brings more opportunities to laugh and have fun together.
If you’re looking for a new year team building event to do, Invite Japan has a wide range of options, including in-person, outdoor and online activities. Start off 2022 on the right foot and get your team ready for the year ahead.
