One rule: no talking! Equip your team with two short pieces of pipe of around 1 metre each guttering works well. Then introduce them to the game area. This might be laid out with obstacles such as steps or hurdles. The aim of the challenge is for the team to run a marble along the pipes, from one end of the game area to the other.
They will need to keep moving the unused section of pipe and work together to navigate obstacles and keep the ball in a pipe at all times. Introduce a time limit to spice things up. When it comes to workplace life, things can get a bit staid. And staidness is bad news for well-functioning teams. Inject some fun into the day and foster team spirit through collective giving, by organising fancy dress days for charity.
Create two human lines opposite each other. Then set a timer whereby the teams simply look at each other for seconds. At the buzzer, one team turns their backs and the other team can switch things around, like their position, hair style, or even items of clothing! The other team then turns around and tries to identify the changes. Swap turns! Split the team into groups of two who sit back to back. One person has paper and a pencil. Give the other player an image which they must describe to their co-player so that they can draw it, without saying explicitly what it is and using shape descriptors only.
The back story is that the team is lost in the Arctic and must build a shelter to survive. One teammate is injured and must lie, stuck and tries not to use this as an opportunity for forty winks meaning the shelter must be built around them. One team mate is the leader but his hands are riddled with frostbite, so can only talk.
The remaining team members are unfortunately afflicted with snow blindness AKA a blindfold. Set a time limit and get cracking. A golden oldie of party games but one that works superbly for team building is Who Am I? Everyone has the name of a famous character or celebrity stuck to their back. They must then wander around asking yes-no questions of others and answering questions to determine who they are.
If you want to change it up more for the workplace and use it as a way of challenging stereotypes and prejudices then instead of characters and celebrities, use characteristics e. Gather lots of pennies, choosing ones with various dates. Team members take turns pulling a penny out of a jar and sharing something interesting or memorable that happened to them or something they experienced that year.
Few things bond and unite teams like some good nosh. From having an ice cream break on a boiling day to hiring a chocolate fountain or candy floss machine just for fun, bring the team together over the focus of food! Grab a blanket, sheet or piece of tarpaulin and lay it out flat.
The team must then huddle together on it with the catch that one complete quarter of the blanket must always be people free.
You can do squats and eat well, and also make sure you drink enough water. Water Shots is a game meant to fortify your team around healthy hydration. Virtual team building games that focus on building healthy habits are a great way to support company culture and development with remote teams. Charades is one of those games that nearly everyone plays at school or home while growing up. With this proliferation of Charades, Virtual Charades has the advantages of being fairly familiar while also being fun.
To play Virtual Charades, prepare a set of links that go to Google Image pages or use a random image generator. Rinse and repeat until you are all out of fun. Here is a random charades word generator you can use for your game:.
Instead, you can play with at least two teams, a series of trivia questions, and positive attitudes. Playing pub-style trivia online is similar to the in-the-pub version, with one crucial difference: you need an easy way for people to communicate. Instead of mumbling across a table, we recommend using virtual breakout rooms so that each team can discuss the answers openly.
Each team can then submit the answers via a web-form and the host can award points as needed. Here are more instructions on how to play virtual happy hour trivia , and a list of team trivia questions. Pro tip: Playing virtual happy hour games like pub-style trivia give you a unique opportunity to include wildly different clues in the game. The internet is your oyster for virtual group games. Werewolf is one of the best remote team building games, as it is full of cunning deceit and tactful manipulation.
The game relies primarily on the spoken word, which makes it perfect for remote teams. To play this game virtually, nominate one person as the narrator and then randomly distribute the following roles to players:. To play, first distribute the roles via private message or email the players in advance. For a group of five people, you should have 1 werewolf, 1 medic and 3 villagers. For each additional five people add 1 werewolf, 1 special role, and 3 villagers. The ratios are flexible, so can modify them to suit your needs.
The narrator then puts the werewolves back to sleep and has the medic and seer wake up in sequence. If the medic selects the same player as the werewolf, then nobody dies during the night. When the seer points to a player, the narrator can answer yes or no to whether that player is a werewolf.
All players can open their eyes, and then debate on who the werewolf might be. To end the round, all players vote on one player to eliminate from the game or can pass and wait until the next round.
Any player that is eliminated either by the werewolves or by vote becomes a friendly ghost that is not allowed to speak for the rest of the game but may observe it in quiet frustration.
To play, divide the attendees of your virtual conference call into groups of four or five people and then give the groups 15 minutes of prep time. After the 15 minute breakout session, bring everyone back to the main virtual meeting and have the teams present their creation. Vote on the best one with thumbs up and cheers.
Spreadsheet Wars is one of my favorite virtual team building games to play with coworkers. Like other games on this list, Spreadsheet Wars is a combination of fun and skill-building, which makes it perfect for remote teams and offices. The best tool wins, and really everyone wins because you are getting better at using one of the most powerful free tools on the internet.
Growing up, one of my favorite games to play was Risk, the game of global domination that meshes perfectly with my own aspirations. Risk is a game of cutthroat collaboration, friendly competition, resource management and other strategic dynamics that make it perfect for team building online.
The most flexible way to play Risk-like team games online is to use one of the many clones, for example Conquer Club , which provides a free browser based game. Here are more online board games to play at work. In the early s, Sudoku took the world by storm; inspiring nerds everywhere to complete numerical logic games instead of the daily crossword.
Today, you can play a version of Sudoku for online team building called Sudoku Throw-down. For Sudoku Throw-down, you can easily up the competitive spirit by including prizes for the top three finishers.
I recommend nerd-friendly prizes like more Sudoku puzzles, science kits and white boards. Here are more problem solving games. Something in common is an icebreaker game that works on video conference calls and similar. To play, first organize your attendees into manageable sized groups of four or five people and gently push them into breakout rooms. Step 4. After a minute, give one team member from each group the opportunity to view the structure again for ten seconds, then brief the group on what they saw for 25 seconds.
Step 5. Step 4 can be repeated as needed with new team members. Step 6. The winner is the first team to accurately recreate the Lego structure. In this game, the team must work together to get all individual employees through the challenge. Materials: String and tape Step 1. Fix pieces of string across a doorway at various heights and at different angles, with the strings crossing each other to create a web.
Each team member must go through a different opening in the string. Instruct the team to choose one person who is responsible for selecting the order and hole for each team member, one member who is allowed to speak, and one person who is allowed to touch and move one string at a time.
Sometimes being productive as a team means coming up with creative new ideas. The team-building games below will have your team looking at both problems and opportunities in new ways, within the five-minute time limit. Jigsaw puzzles are just the background for this selection from our 5-minute team building activities. The real test will require your team members to apply problem-solving techniques and show flexibility in addressing an unexpected challenge.
Materials: One piece jigsaw puzzle for each small group Step 1. Place one puzzle on each table. Remove five pieces from each and place them on another table. Divide team members to each table and assign them to complete the provided puzzle. To finish their puzzle, each team will need to find a way to work with the other teams to find and claim their missing pieces.
Another simple 5-minute team building activities for the workplace, this exercise is all about overcoming the initial frustration of a challenge to find the right solution—all while working together as a team. Divide your team into even groups of six to ten employees. Paper Tower is another fun game that can be used to spark innovation and creativity in your team.
The simple materials and constraints of this exercise mean employees will need to look at everyday items in new ways to be successful. Materials: pieces of letter-size paper per team Step 1.
An old school classic which you more probably played as a child, but will definitely still work on an adult work team to aid conversation and get employees to know each other, is would you rather.
When someone catches the ball they have five-seconds to name a movie that no one else has named before. This encourages employees to think on the spot; and, you can learn a lot about people from the movies they watch. Give each team member a penny and ask them to remember something that happened in the year that penny was made. Another activity that will enhance communication and be fun for all employees to play is 20 questions.
Another activity, often used in interviews, but can also be used as a team building activity is the island analogy. To do this, sit all your team members in a circle and get them all to stare at each other for as long as possible without smiling; the last person to smile wins. The aim of this fun game is that someone who is sitting in the outer circle must grab the treasure from underneath the chair without the person who is sat on top of it noticing.
Finally, the paper towel is a quick, easy and fun team building exercise that teaches employees planning, timing and organisation. Give each employee an A4 sheet of paper, and give them five minutes to create the tallest free-standing structure possible. Whoever is the tallest, wins! These meaningful activities all improve time management, team bonding, decision making, communication skills, learning outcomes in smaller teams.
It has been shown that trust is related to team effectiveness, so if you want effective teams, including remote employees and in-office ones, it is really important that your employees trust both you and each other. Research has shown that when members within a team trust each other that team believes they perform better, feel less stressed, are more committed and are more satisfied. This is especially important in virtual teams. Other studies have also supported this, finding that teams with more trust were more committed and satisfied.
Also, if your employees feel that they are trusted and that they can trust you, they are more satisfied so are less likely to leave your team, or company; which saves you money and increases your team's effectiveness and cohesiveness!
These activities are good to do on the first day of a new team working together, in a conference room, and should engage the rest of the group or entire team. There are things other than team building activities that can be used to increase team effectiveness. One of the most crucial things that can be done in any team to, not only increase trust and cohesiveness but also effectiveness, is to understand each team members personality and work style. There are several tools that can help you measure and understand your employees' personality, read more about them on this article.
Going back to my above answer, using personalities can help you build the correct team, and understand the personalities you already have on that team. Tools such as WorkStyle measure employee personality to give you in-depth team analytics, behavioural suggestions and team improvement suggestions.
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