When you mention team-building activities, do your employees show some excitement or roll their eyes? Most HRs and bosses will say their employees are not excited at all about activities in the workplace. And they don’t know why that is happening. Shouldn’t they be happy about the fun activities and games?
It is because you are doing it all wrong! Your employees won’t show any excitement for team-building activities, and they will start re-running the episodes of The Office in their heads. So, what’s the solution?
Change your way of working, your approach and the old and boring fun activities and games at work. Would you love eating the same dish every day? The same goes for employees when you talk about playing the same boring games that they just played last week.
Keep reading this blog if you are confused about which games you should arrange at work for your employees to foster growth and solidify bonds. It contains nine fun team-building activities and games for your employees to play this month!
9 Fun Team-Building Activities & Games for Your Employees
The advantages of team-building activities are numerous. However, some managers aren’t able to benefit from these fun games and activities due to a lack of knowledge. If you are not convinced or aware of the enormous benefits of team-building activities, look at some stats from the latest survey:
- 50% of employees plan to leave their job
- 25% of employees resign in the first year
- 23% of employees face burnout in the workplace
One of the best ways to retain employees and build a better bottom line is to arrange team-building activities periodically. Let’s take a deep dive into this article to learn about the most fun activities and games that your employees will love!
1. Meeting Kickoff
Professional meetings should not always be boring. Spice them up with some fun and motivate your employees to enjoy conferences. How’s that possible? Instead of starting the meeting with a talk about the work, start with a quick game or icebreaker. Here is a list of some ideas to make the video meetings more fun:
- Special Dinner: The host can ask the employees about which figure they would love to have dinner with and why. That would be an incredibly fun activity during professional meetings!
- Two Truths and a Lie: Ask each team member to tell one lie and two truths about themselves. Let the rest of the team do the guesswork and find out the falsehood.
- Emoji Summary: Before you start your Zoom meeting, you can ask the attendees to explain something, which could be their recent trip, but the twist is they don’t have to use words for the explanation. Instead, they have to do it using emojis.
- Achievement Sharing: You can ask each member of the team to share their personal achievement. Everyone has different goals (pun intended).
- Do not SMILE: Tell your team they are not allowed to smile or laugh during the meeting and see who breaks the rule first and how long the attendees don’t smile.
These team-building activities are a must-try if most employees work remotely. This way, those employees who love meetings will roll their eyes now when you talk about having a quick meeting.
2. Blind Drawing
It is one of the most effective team-building activities that develops communication and leadership skills. This activity is perfect for small groups, and there is nothing too much required to arrange this team-building activity. You will need a pen, paper, and some pictures (you can also use your phone for the pictures) for this game. Blind Drawing takes only 10-15 minutes, and now let’s determine how to play this fun game:
- First, you have to pair people into groups of two.
- Make both of them sit back to back.
- Give one person a picture and a pen and paper.
- Ask the first person to describe the image to the other person.
- The twist is that they don’t have to tell exactly what’s in the picture.
The statement above might be confusing for some of our readers, but here’s how you can understand it easily. Example –
- If there is a picture of a cat drinking milk from a bowl, the person can’t say, “Draw a picture of a cat drinking milk from a bowl.
- Instead, they can use terms around the topic to let the person drawing understand what’s in the picture.
The drawing results would be fun, and there is no chance your employees won’t get excited about this fun activity. Plus, this game will also help your team understand how clearly they interpret each other, resulting in an improvement in their communication skills.
3. What’s My Name
If you want your new hires to interact with each other, you must try arranging the game What’s My Name in the workplace. In addition, this game will help all the employees become aware of how they stereotype and treat people based on their characteristics. You don’t need anything else to play this fun game other than a pen and sticky notes. Here’s how to play What’s My Name:
- Write the names of the most influential personalities on the notes.
- Place the sticky notes with names on the foreheads of the team.
- Do not let people know who they’ll represent during the game.
- The team has to interact with each other with sticky notes on their foreheads.
- They can ask each other questions. However, the questions must be based on the label the other person has on their forehead.
Not only does this game help with engagement and increased communication between the employees, but it will also give everyone a great message about how they treat people based on stereotypes.
4. 3 Question Mingle
One of the best ways to encourage fresh recruits to get to know each other is by making them play 3 Questions Mingle. With the help of this fantastic game, the new hires can quickly learn about each other in a friendly and relaxed environment. The tools required to play this are also a pen and paper. It could prove to be an icebreaker for your team, and here’s how to play 3 Question Mingle:
- Give each player sticky notes for question writing.
- Ask each participant to write three open-ended questions.
- Give your employees example questions like “Where do you see yourself in the next five years?”
- When you say “GO,” the team will start to mingle.
- Once the team finds their pairs, they ask each other one of the questions they wrote.
- They keep swapping questions one after another, and the time limit for this game could be 10-15 minutes.
You can ask your team about what they learned about each other during the 3 Question Mingle after the game is over.
5. Pack Up Your Troubles
Why not use fun and games to improve our workplace? Or help people facing difficulties at work. This game is all about helping each other resolve the issues they are facing at the workplace. It is one of the best ways to have fun at the workplace while being productive all the time. To play this game, you don’t need anything other than a pen and paper. Here’s how to play Pack Up Your Troubles:
- Give the participants a pen and paper.
- Ask your team to write about issues they face at work.
- Make slips and put them all in a bowl.
- Pick a slip randomly and let all the people brainstorm solutions.
With this fun game, the employer will get to know the issues the team is facing and make the office a better place. It will also highlight the problem-solving capabilities of your team and let your team learn a little more about everyone.
6. The Egg Drop
The Egg Drop is one of the most popular team-building activities that encourages problem-solving through teamwork. You have to divide your team into different groups and provide them with a package of limited resources, which they will use to build a structure around the egg for survival when dropped from a 2-3-storey building. Here’s the detailed information you need to know about how to play The Egg Drop:
- Find a location near the workplace that you can use to test the team structure.
- Make enough material bags for groups participating in the game.
- The bag must contain two pencils and two sheets of scrap paper.
- Give all the groups time to brainstorm ideas and draw the structure for their egg to survive the drop in the first ten minutes.
- The next forty minutes are to create a structure that they have designed in the first ten minutes of the game.
- Now, it’s time to test their structures; drop the structure with eggs inside to determine if they survive the drop.
- Once you drop all the eggs, let the team check whose egg breaks after the fall.
- The group whose eggs survive the fall WINS the game.
In this game, there are chances of a tie, and in this type of circumstance, you can increase the height of the drop to decide a winner.
7. Birthday Line-Up
Birthday Line-Up is one of the most effective icebreakers and team-building activities, perfect for a team of up to 40 people. This game is simple but fun. You ask everyone to get on their feet and arrange themselves in order when they are born. To make sure that you are not playing this game to determine who is the oldest in the room and make the situation awkward, you will use the date and month.
But what’s the catch? The people participating in this game cannot talk to each other. Instead, they will use sign language and their nose, hands, eyes, and ears, but not their mouth, to guess where their slot is and when the other person was born. The person born on January 1st will stand in the first line, while the person born on December 31st will be the last person standing in the row.
While other people find their slots and guess each other’s DOB, you can sit back and see who the born leaders are. A few people in the group will take charge and may also help other people find their slot in the line. Moreover, many people will get to know the birthdays of people they have never talked with.
8. The Office Cook-Off
Who doesn’t like activities and games that involve lip-smacking food? And who knows if you have a master chef onboard? Instead of making your employees cook at home for the potluck party, take a cooking class at work. Not only will it foster engagement among your employees, but your team also gets to enjoy a variety of finger-licking from different chefs.
However, organising a cooking event all on your own could be cumbersome, so consider hiring a corporate cooking event organiser to make this team-building activity more fun. Also, have all your employees sign up for the event, either as participants or judges. Here are a few tips for easy organisation of your corporate cooking event perfectly:
- Get everyone to sign up for the cooking event, either as judges or participants.
- Make a few groups out of participants.
- Register the cuisines of every group they are going to cook.
- The dishes must be different but can be anything from starters to desserts.
- Organise the event and savour different kinds of flavourful dishes at work
Pro Tip: Following step three to organising your corporate event is necessary. Otherwise, you are going to have ten different-tasting apple pies due to your lack of planning.
9. Outdoor Sports Match
If your team is tired of indoor games and team-building activities, it’s time to arrange an outdoor sports match. It is one of the most effective ways to build a strong team. Outdoor activities often include parties, conversations, and GAMES. There are several games that you can play along with your team; some are as follows:
- The Human Knot
- Treasure Hunt
- Take a Hike
- Play Hide and Go Seek
- Plant Some Trees
On the Final Note
You might have heard of this adage, alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much, which means that as a team, you can achieve whatever you want. But if there is no bonding in the team, everything will go the opposite of what you’ve expected. One of the easiest ways to improve engagement and bonding among the team is by organising team-building activities and games at work.
However, bosses, managers, and the human resources department often get confused about which team-building activities and games to arrange that everyone in the team loves playing. This exclusive blog contains a list of the top nine fun team-building activities and games that your team will surely love playing.
