What Team Building Activities are Used by Companies Today?
Team building has quietly become a standing item rather than an annual outing. Teams are split across offices, home desks and time zones, and the ordinary hallway contact that used to build trust does not happen by itself any more. The fact remains that teams are more efficient and productive when they collaborate well, and that collaboration is easier to arrange than most managers expect. It does not take a large budget to organize meaningful team building activities and gain success with leadership in teams.
What team building activities are used by companies today? Below are the formats that companies actually repeat, what each one costs in money and preparation, and a simple scorecard for choosing between them.
Top Modern Team Building Activities for Companies
Team building is about building trust through effort and achievement resulting in increased motivation. Tight cohesive teams are more efficient, productive, communicate better, and of course, work together better than teams that are not cohesive.
TEAM = Trust + Effort + Achievement + Motivation
There are still many things you can do to ensure unity and boost the productivity of your team by cultivating greater interpersonal relationships. Some of the ideas suggested below may not be new to you, but some will hopefully give you a great idea for activities that most, if not all, people will like and it may get employees excited about work. So, take a look and see if you can arrange these activities now or in the near future.
Bond Through Board Games
The least expensive activity on this list, and the one that requires the least preparation, is an event you can organize in your own offices. All you need to do is provide a shelf of board games, as well as some snacks and drinks. People might even bring their own favorite games and teach their colleagues how to play them. Again, the focus is not on competing, but on people spending time together, having fun and getting to know each other better. Keep the rules simple enough that someone can join a game halfway through without a ten minute explanation.
Spend Time Together Camping
This may seem like a very radical team building activity, but we assure you that it can be a great success. First of all, going camping means leaving your comfort zone and learning to adapt by thinking outside the box and applying skills in a completely different environment.
However, you need to provide your colleagues with all the necessary equipment and gear, such as tents, sleeping bags, food and water, and a first aid kit. Also, select a period when no extreme temperatures are expected, so that people can really enjoy themselves while spending time outdoors. This is especially important for those who have never been camping, and you do not want bad weather to ruin the whole experience. Make attendance genuinely optional: an overnight trip is the one activity on this list that some people cannot join for family or health reasons.
Work Together Through an Escape Room
Most people have already tried this activity, either with friends or coworkers. Still, you can exploit this fun and inexpensive way of allowing people a chance to work together in order to solve a problem that is seemingly insolvable. Find a local escape room offering problems that require combined knowledge to solve, or those that will ask people to overcome their fears. Online escape rooms now run the same puzzles over a video call, which makes this one of the few formats that works for a team split across locations.
Again, the focus should be on collaboration rather than the time needed to solve the problem. As with most other activities, you should make teams comprising of people who do not know each other so well. Since the activity is designed to require communication and combined knowledge of all members, they will have to maximize everyone’s strength in order to solve the puzzle. This is also a great way to build trust among team members.
Communicate Together with Scavenger Hunts
One that you probably expected to find here, a scavenger hunt has been among the most popular team building activities for many years now. Team members have to communicate with each other and figure out the strengths of each individual in order to complete the tasks. Sometimes they might be required to step outside their comfort zone, but the most important thing is that those who need to do that feel secure, because they have their team members by their side.
Like with most other activities suggested here, it is usually best to create teams consisting of people who do not work or spend time together, or who might not even know each other at all, in order to get familiar with their colleagues. The result will be beneficial for the overall communication in the company. A photo based version, where each clue is completed by sending a picture to a shared channel, lets people at home play the same hunt as people in the building.
Collaborate with Pub Trivia
Some employees would rather not do anything physical, for a number of reasons, and if there are those among your employees, you might want to consider a pub trivia event. You can organize it in a local pub to make it more authentic, though you might also gather people through an online platform. The most important thing is for people to have fun and ensure employees collaborate, which is why you should put them in teams with those they do not know so well, since the point of pub trivia and team building activities is to allow people to get to know each other better while having a great time.
How to Choose the Right Team Building Activity
The activity that fails is usually the one that did not fit the team, not the one that was too cheap. Score each option against what you actually have: budget, preparation time, and where your people sit. The scorecard below compares the five formats in this article on exactly those terms.
| Activity | Cost to run | Prep time | Works remotely | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Board games | Low | An hour | Partly | New starters meeting the wider team |
| Escape room | Medium | A booking call | Yes, online rooms exist | Groups that need to solve problems together |
| Scavenger hunt | Low | A day to write clues | Yes, with photo tasks | Departments that rarely speak to each other |
| Pub trivia | Low | An evening | Yes | Teams who want something not physical |
| Camping trip | High | Several weeks | No | Small teams with a long project ahead |
Two practical rules make the choice easier. Mix the teams so people work with colleagues they do not know well, and run something small every month or two rather than saving the whole budget for one large event that people forget by the following quarter.
Team Building Activities for Companies
These are just some team building ideas for you if you are planning to organize some team building activities for your company. As you can see, they do not require substantial funds and can be organized easily.
On the other hand, if you choose the right activities, people will be able to have a great time, with great stories to tell, which will have an excellent effect on their relationships and, eventually, motivation and productivity will improve. And driving organizational performance is key to successful organizations.
Frequently Asked Questions
What team building activities are used by companies today?
The activities that show up most often are low cost and repeatable: board game afternoons, escape rooms, scavenger hunts, pub trivia nights and the occasional overnight camping trip. Companies tend to rotate two or three of them through the year rather than run one large annual event.
How often should a company run team building activities?
Little and often beats one big day out. A short activity every four to six weeks keeps relationships warm, and it costs far less to organize than an annual offsite that people forget by spring.
How do you include remote and hybrid team members?
Pick activities that work the same way for everyone in the room and everyone on the call, such as online trivia or a shared puzzle, or bring the remote members in for the in person events and treat the travel as part of the budget.
How do you know whether a team building activity worked?
Watch what happens in the weeks afterwards. If people who did not talk before are now asking each other for help, handing work over cleanly and raising problems earlier, the activity did its job. If nothing changes, try a different format rather than a bigger budget.
