Staying ahead in the corporate world requires a motivated and inspired team. Engage your employees with fun team-building activities to maintain a positive work environment and help build and strengthen connections within your team.
Team-building activities help promote communication and collaboration within a group. They also provide an opportunity for employees to get to know each other better, which can lead to a more positive work environment.
There are many different team-building activities that you can choose from, but not all of them will be equally effective for your team. To help you choose the right activity for your group, we’ve compiled a list of our top picks.
Some of the most effective team-building activities involve philanthropy. The sense of giving is a strong motivator in participation and everyone gets the opportunity to contribute. Not only will your company be seen as a good citizen, but your employees be giving back to a worthy cause and will be working together to make a difference they are happy to talk about and share.
Here are a few of our favorite suggestions:
Stop The Hunger Games
In this charitable challenge, your team will aim to gather as many non-perishable food products as possible before attempting to construct an outstanding structure entirely out of them. The non-perishables will then be given to a nearby food bank.
Cooking for a Cause
This non-competitive team building exercise will have your team working together to make meals for homeless or domestic violence shelters. Teams prepare starter courses, entrees, sides and desserts before packing it all up and delivering it to the shelter. Most shelters are even happy to arrange pick-up and a community representative is always happy to speak to your group about what your contributions mean to the facility.
Random Actions of Kindness
It’s not difficult to find an Elder care, group home, mission or shelter in need of a few extra hands. Painting projects, clean-up and basic repair work, for instance, could be a fantastic way to bring out the varied talent within your team and provide a wonderful opportunity to test the kindness and ingenuity of your team.
Nothing brings out the best in people quite like a little healthy competition. If you have a competitive group, then incorporating some friendly competition into your team-building activity can be a great way to motivate them. Besides, team-building games can help the team improve morale, develop cooperation and problem solving, and get to know one another better.
Here are a few ideas:
The Amazing Race
Like the TV show, teams compete against each other in a race to the finish line. But instead of traveling to different locations around the world, teams will navigate their way through your city or town, completing various challenges along the way.
Escape Room
An escape room is a physical adventure game in which players are locked in a room and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles and riddles to escape.
Group Games
Divide the players into teams, then have them line up behind a start line to begin different games, such as tug of war, lego building or ‘Minute to Win it’-type of games.
The winning team is the one that possesses the most points.
Egg Drop Challenge
Can your team design an apparatus out of drinking straws and masking tape that will prevent a raw egg from breaking when dropped from overhead? In this challenge, groups of employees work together to prototype and test their crash-absorbing mechanism against those of the other teams. Success requires collaboration, leadership, task-assignment and problem resolution skills.
Sales Training for Improving Teamwork
This activity promotes creativity and is ideal for your marketing team, while other teams can enjoy it.
Each team has five minutes to create a unique advertisement for a chosen item. Each round is won by the team with the most inventive advertisement.
Bonding experiences are another great way to build team morale and camaraderie in a non-competitive environment. These activities help employees get to know each other on a personal level, which can lead to a more positive work environment.
Here are a few great ideas:
Plan a Getaway
An out-of-office team-building vacation allows your employees to break up their daily routines and improves engagement, morale, and productivity. The getaway might include something simple like a local nature tours or more elaborate like a sail boating trip.
Simple Contests
A department desk decor competition, for instance, is always popular. You could also organize a cookie or guacamole-making competition where staff submits their finest recipes and the team votes on their favorites. In the fall, Chili cook offs or Beef Stew competitions are always a hit.
These simple competitions help forge a little friendly contest while allowing co-workers to socialize or bond over a mutual interest.
Cooking Lessons
As cooking classes frequently require numerous hands to complete what you're producing, they're a terrific method to foster team unity. Pasta making classes are extremely popular and require very little in the way of ingredients - and it’s easy for anyone to do.
Karaoke Evening
What better approach to encourage your staff to come out of their shells than by asking them to participate in karaoke? Great prizes help to encourage participation and soon - everyone is bonding and having memorable fun!
The ultimate aim of team-building exercises is to help your team members to get close and develop trust. Some can incorporate learning activities, while others can be purely participatory. Some generate competition and others just generate fun.
A successful and efficiently running company depends on its employees being able to communicate with one another and work in a pleasant environment. Team-building exercises and games can do both of these things and will help raise morale and cooperation in the process.
Here at Wingspread, we thrive on creating opportunities for connection and deeper understanding of one another. Successful team-building activities are just one of the ways we help teams succeed. Reach out to explore even more ways in which we can motivate and inspire YOUR team.
