An important part of office life is the ability to get along, have fun and develop leadership skills within your team. Most companies will attempt to do at least one team-building day each year. Great companies will do them frequently.
Here are some popular activities that’ll get you out of the office that most employees enjoy for team building.
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Escape Rooms
In the past decade, escape rooms have been gaining popularity around the world. These challenging team building activities can be an immersive way to get your team into some very different and unusual situations. Typically teams of 4-12 people (depending on the room) will have 1 hour to solve a series of interactive puzzles in order to get out of the room with minimal assistance from the host who is watching via security cameras.
Escape rooms often force players to step up and demonstrate their leadership skills as they negotiate, strategise and coordinate the team through the challenges. This can be a great way to get people who might not normally speak up and get involved.
The thing that makes escape room experiences different to most other team building facilitating locations is that you can only really do each one once. As a result, most locations offer a few different rooms to try. This is great because you can split your staff into smaller groups and attempt a few different rooms, or organise it in such a way that people haven’t done a room they’ve done previously.
Go Karting
If you think your team will enjoy something a little more fast-paced and requires a little less thinking, go-karting is a fun way for employees to blow off steam. Racing allows people to show off their driving skills and builds a competitive spirit in your staff. You might find ways to split departments into teams in order to see which group can get the fastest collaborative lap time.
When considering this as an activity for your staff, research if there are any weight limits or if there are any staff members who might not be able to operate the vehicle for any reason. You must ensure your team building event is as inclusive as possible.
Sightseeing Trip
Hire a bus and take your team out to go sightseeing to a nearby town, city or tourist spot. You could add some elements of competitiveness by organising a trivia contest during the bus ride. A new shared experience to a new place for the first time can be a memorable bonding experience.
Axe Throwing
This is a unique trend that is starting to becoming a popular activity for team building and birthday parties. What makes this an interesting activity is that it is unlikely that many of your staff will have much experience at this, meaning everyone will be starting on a similar playing field.
Axe throwing group activities start with a training session and you throw at targets with a scoring system similar to darts. To keep this inclusive, they have bigger and smaller axes available and allow people to throw with one or two hands.
Trampoline Park
If you want to get even more physical, trampoline parks are a lot of fun. These might sound juvenile but they are more elaborate than the trampolines you may have had in your backyard as a kid. This is another activity that lets the team burn energy and show off their skills. Just be sure that your team is physically able to participate so no one misses out.
Laser Tag
Another great team-based activity is laser tag. Most laser tag places will allow teams to be split into 2-3 different groups and have a lot of different game modes or rule sets. You can do departments versus departments, managers versus the rest of the staff and all kinds of variations.
There are many other great team building activities you can do outside of the office. Research the different types of activities in your city using a website like TripAdvisor or Yelp and see which have the best reviews. When choosing something try and get some buy-in from your staff, perhaps allow them to vote on multiple options. But most importantly make sure it is something all of your staff will enjoy and is something that everyone can participate in.
