When your team understands each other’s working styles, communicates with ease, and genuinely likes spending time together, it makes for a great working environment. But it’s rare that a team comes together and bonds on their own without upper management intervening.
To prevent the usual eyerolls that forced bonding induces, get creative with your team building activity!
5 Fun Team Building Activities for Work
1. Foster Creative Problem Solving Within Your Team with Escape Room
Help your team: Communicate, collaborate and foster creative problem solving
What you’ll need: 5–10 puzzles, a stopwatch and an empty conference room
Instructions: Using a series of puzzles that vary from riddles to locks to physical challenges, set up a scenario in which your employees must complete these puzzles in a certain sequence in a certain amount of time.
Bonus points: Create a theme for your escape room! Decorate the conference room like a bunker from a zombie apocalypse, and have the puzzles help guide participants through a story to keep their attention.
2. Use a Volunteer Day as a Team Ice Breaker
Help your team: Break the ice, gain perspective, give back to your community
What you’ll need: A charity that aligns with your company’s values or benefits the local community where you work
Instructions: Contact the volunteer coordinator for the charity of your choice and organize an activity that your team can do all together. Make sure to put it on everyone’s calendar far in advance.
3. Collaborate as a Team and Paint a Mural
Help your team: Think creatively, work collaboratively, learn each other’s strengths
What you’ll need: Paint, brushes and a drop cloth or tarp
Instructions: Find a space to put your mural. Ideally there is a wall in your office that could use color where your team’s art could live. However, if your mural can’t live in your office, you could always contact your local public works department to see if they have a space for a mural, or even use a large canvas or butcher paper for a more temporary piece. Then have your team work together to decide on a design and complete it together.
4. Cultivate Your Team With a Scavenger Hunt
Help your team: Collaborate, tap their competitive side, explore a new place
What you’ll need: A list of tasks to complete inside or outside your office and a camera
Instructions: Split your team into at least 2 teams so they can compete to complete the most items on your scavenger hunt. Make sure each team has a list. Require photo evidence for proof that each task is completed, then set them loose. Make it more challenging with a time limit.
Bonus Points: Share the photos you gather from the scavenger hunt with your team, or upload them to your Glassdoor profile!
5. If All Else Fails... a Silent Disco is a Fun Team Building Activity
Help your team: Ice breaker, prioritizing culture adds over culture fits
What you’ll need: Cordless headphones, you should have one for each participating team member.
Instructions: Make a playlist of crowd pleasing, fun-to-dance-to songs. If you’re struggling, check out the pre-made playlists on Spotify. Make sure all of your cordless headphones are working and connected to your music, then press play! Dancing together is a great way to blow off steam. The possibilities for getting silly are endless, and there’s something about the safety of a silent party that draws people out. And since dancers get three playlists to choose from, there’s no need for any kind of conformity when it comes to music preferences.
For more resources on how to engage your employees at work, check out our eBook Complete Guide to Employee Engagement Activities.
