I don’t know about you but team-building activities have always been a great and fun way to get involved with your co-workers in getting to know them a bit better. It’s an exciting time to learn more about your team and see a more bubbly side to them, instead of that drowsy 9am look.

We can all admit that the past few years have been hard so why not bring some excitement back into the office with some of these fun team-building activities or exercises?

What are the Benefits of Team-Building Activities?

Increase Motivation

Team building can support the motivation of employees through different exercises and games that incorporate all team members. This is through enhancing everyone’s ability to gain momentum in doing a task, ensuring all members are motivated to discuss and become involved with each other, building confidence among your team.

Not only is there an increased level of team bonding but employees are likely to become appreciative when the organization is willing to invest in them. 

Encourage Creativity

Unique team-building activities can help encourage creativity among your team by allowing your team to use their imagination in coming up with creative solutions. This can become a domino effect which can give confidence for other members to incorporate their ideas and encourage fun team activities.

Companies with more diverse backgrounds will benefit further from this, as research shows diversifying your thinking supports idea generation. This was examined by Chamorro-Premusiz, 2017 explaining “diverse team composition does seem to confer an advantage when it comes to generating a wider range of original and useful ideas”. 

Increased Collaboration

A large benefit of team-building activities is increasing collaboration and teamwork among employees. Collaboration means to trust and understand someone’s knowledge about a problem or situation and using this to create a solution. By having teamwork games that people can enjoy, it encourages people to develop their networks outside of their role so support them in the future.

This may not seem useful at the moment but can support your team in the long term. Your network is your net worth and knowing more people can help your chances of success in anything. Collaboration improves the team bonding among your team too, building trust and confidence within your team which can further enhance confidence, motivation, and satisfaction within your company.

Improved Communication

This is really a no-brainer but communication will peak when you incorporate more team-building activities and activities for work. Having fun activities to motivate employees in understanding and communicating with each other can build a level of closeness among your team that can break down walls of mistrust. Improving communication is more than just talking and understanding each other, it allows your teammates to nurture strengths and address weaknesses which helps everyone improve their abilities.

A strong team is about making your weaknesses your strengths which is always easier with a helpful and insightful team to support.  

What are some Great Team-Building Activities?

The Go Game

The Go Game allows you to collaborate with friends and colleagues globally on its virtual platform to play its team-building activities ranging from pop trivia, team drawing to categories. It helps keep employees engaged with everyone online and visible, encouraging constant participation. The games themselves can take anywhere between 45-60 minutes and participants are guided through a variety of games, these include:

  • Buzz In Pub Trivia
  • Giphy Challenge
  • Pictionary Drawing
  • Head-to-Head Social Games
  • Lipdub
  • Fun Fact Match 
  • Categories
  • Live Polling and Voting

There is also a range of features that can be used by the host to increase the enjoyability of the activities. These include music, pointing out highlights, and providing topical commentary. It’s simple to play too, no additional software is needed and can be played on any browser.

Players are divided into 3 teams and have to rack up enough points to win through the timed challenges. All you need is a good WiFi connection, headphones, and a webcam to start playing.

The Escape Game

The Escape Game is known best for its experience in real life of being stuck in a room and solving puzzles to get out before the timer runs out but this virtual escape room can offer the same experience and excitement but with more people.

Designed through a Zoom call, a member from The Escape Game company will host the game by using a live camera feed and online dashboard with 360-degree scans of the rooms. Teams will support each other in solving puzzles and finding clues to escape. This is a perfect opportunity for team bonding as it engages all members of the team to quick thinking and incorporates everyone regardless of location, playing as if you’re all together. 

QuizBreaker

QuizBreaker is a scheduled virtual team building quiz delivered to your inbox. It helps team bonding regardless of location, being used and trusted by hundreds of teams to boost engagement and morale. This is a great way to get to know a new team member with new quiz questions each round, friendly competition, and runs automatically on your chosen schedule. The quiz is gamified to make it not only fun but rewarding with the ability to receive achievement badges.

QuizBreaker can work for any business regardless if you’re a Fortune 500 company or a non-profit organization, multiple teams can play anywhere between 3 to 1,000+ players.

The only downside of QuizBreaker is you might be on it for hours having too much fun! So get engaged and hop on a call with your team to start playing today. It will help improve confidence, communication, motivation, and collaboration among your virtual team. 

Board Games Marathon 

Time to take it old school with a few great board games to get you and your team engaged in a friendly game of Cluedo to Monopoly to Ludo and more. This will really have all members engaged and motivated to win each of the games but also get a great understanding of how each member strategizes.

There’s always a strategy to every game win so this can get a better understanding of how each member thinks and understands a situation even if it’s a basic game. These games will prove to build some trust and closeness among your team members so go on a board game marathon and see who wins the most.

Nerf Battle

Ever thought of what your office might look like in a battleground? Well, you can now with some nerf guns and an all-out nerf war. We all know what nerf guns are capable of and how to use them, so split into 2 teams and play till there’s no team standing to secure the win in some fun nerf war games.

Nerf guns are just safer paintball guns but with less pain and more fun. Not only is it a great and fun team-building exercise but you can really flex on the competition with some great moves!

Give it a try in the office and you might impress your team and boss when you hit some amazing trick shots but make sure to not get carried away, there should always be a safety word. There are many nerf gun games you can play including ‘King of the Hill’, ‘Last Team Standing’, and ‘Free For All’

Own It Day

You might be at the bottom of the corporate ladder and think that your ideas are always belittled and disregarded because of your position but on ‘Own It Day’, this gives the opportunity (regardless of role) to make your ideas shine. This is a day where product ideas are encouraged from anywhere in the organization. Originally started by tech company ‘Limeade’, this gives a great opportunity for everyone to pitch their ideas which can be easily incorporated into any business. 

Not only does it encourage creativity, collaboration, and teamwork among your departments but it builds a sense of care among your team and organization as to treat each employee fairly and equally with a chance to express themselves without being disrespected, something that can easily be ignored in any business. This, therefore, improves team bonding in your company.

Karaoke

Signing in the shower was only practice but when it comes to karaoke, it’s the real deal to show what your vocals are made of! We’ve all tried it and some of us are great, most are bad but all of us are at least having fun. A good way to get along with your team, karaoke sessions become a shared experience that can really lighten anyone’s mood, even on a bad day. This exercise can really help to promote satisfaction between your team and its best after-parties, so give it a try and spend a few hours on the karaoke machine. 

Culture Party

Celebrating the differences that make us is a wonderful thing and even better when there are others to celebrate with you.

Culture parties allow members of different nationalities in one office to come together and express their culture, whether you’re Indian, Hungarian, Arab, or any other ethnicity, it creates a group of shared values among your team. This exercise helps build trust and a sense of belonging among your team members which can support collaboration, motivation, and creativity. 

Classic Night Out

Who doesn’t love to go for a few cocktails with their pals? This is a great activity that helps pass time while getting closer with all your co-workers. Don’t underestimate the power of classic nights out. Due to obvious reasons, you are quite limited to where you can go but don’t worry, there are still many bars and pubs that are available for a bit of drinking, so grab the gang and experiment on a classic night out but make sure to drink responsibly. 

This not only helps build work relationships between your team but allows them to feel comfortable around you and co-workers. It’s sometimes great to share an experience with someone where you can have fun and not have to hold back. A night out could be for you and your team if there is ever any rising tension or you’re just bored in the office.

Movie Night

Watching movies is great. With movie night, you can do it as a weekly theme with your employees to enjoy some new great movies in 2021 or experience heartbreak again by rewatching some fascinating movies that brought a tear to your eye. 

Here’s a list of movies we recommend watching with your team: 

  1. Forrest Gump
  2. Blue Valentine
  3. Up
  4. The Women in Black
  5. The Hangover

We love the idea of having a Movie Night as it’s not only a popular activity but can help with team building. It’s essential to find something that everyone in a team can enjoy and interact with. Movie Night can be turned into other exercises too, like Movie Trivia for the movie junkies. 

Solve it!

Similar in concept to Escape Room, ‘Solve it!’ aims and encourages a team on Zoom to have out-of-the-box thinking and new ideas when presented with a fun but challenging problem. This exercise can be any code, problem, or puzzle that a corporation has presented and tests brainstorming and teamwork among your team with the first solving it earning a reward. There’s no need to worry about having multiple unique problems for each team to solve, just something difficult for everyone to figure out and will require a team to work together. 

This is a great exercise for your team as it tests their collaboration, interpersonal, and creativity skills and allows you to see everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, giving a better insight into how each member of your team can improve, something that should be essential as a leader. This can be very flexible and shouldn’t be too difficult to plan so give it a try.

Playing Mafia

If you don’t know how to play Mafia, it’s a fun card-playing game but does not essentially require cards to play, however is best when you have cards. The aim of the game is quite simple, you need at least 4 players to play and 1 of the 4 are part of the mafia who you must vote out, however, you have no idea which person is part of the mafia, other than the mafia themselves, so you must discuss and see from everyone’s actions and facial expressions who could be the mafia.

From the mafia’s point of view, you need to make sure each member is voted out, till there is only you and the mayor (who directs the game as it goes). The rest of the rules are located here so you get a better understanding of the game. These games can last anywhere between 5 to 30 minutes.

This is best played with 8 or more people, however can be played with 4 members of your team. It will really test your poker face so as not to be voted out if you’re part of the mafia and can be a fun game to play when everyone is truly engaged. This will help to improve collaboration, teamwork, and decision-making among your team, so it can help to improve these skills. 

Make an Office documentary

We all know ‘The Office’ and the great humor, personalities and funny times of the show. Well, it’s time for you and your department to make your very own version. Making a funny documentary with your own jokes, good and bad times can really bring some comedy to your team and it’s fun to make a documentary that you’re part of! Humor can really help build a level of trust and comfort between your team that can help to release any day-to-day stress that has been bothering you. 

However, making a documentary isn’t easy, requiring some effort to put in the right logistical planning, teamwork, initiative, and leadership to shine. This is a great opportunity for your team to develop with each other and have something memorable to hold onto, regardless of their future ambitions, it’s always great to get close with people and share a bond with each other.

Music Performance

This is a fun exercise that requires a lot of teamwork and initiative to truly make a great music performance. There have to be some singers or rappers among your team that can show off their skills to your company. This team-building exercise not only improves your teamwork, creativity, and motivation for work, but it’s an idea that requires the thinking of everyone, suggestions that can contribute to making something amazing and fun.

It’s not easy making good music. Bands, orchestras, or choirs show the efforts put in place to make a great performance and give entertainment to the rest of your company. Of course, there’s the pressure that comes with it but it doesn’t have to be perfect. This exercise is for team working purposes and is best for when working with a new team. You all have one goal in mind that must be achieved. 

The Bottom Line on Team-Building Activities in these Times

This was a comprehensive list of team-building activities that you can implement to help with camaraderie in your squad. These activities for work are all helpful ideas that promote teamwork, creativity, motivation, collaboration, and communication. Some more than others but each has a goal which is to have fun.

Each game is equipped with a learning activity. Nothing is more important than for everyone to work together coherently and with trust for each other so understanding which games or exercises are right for your team is important.