Corporate Team Building

Building a productive workplace starts with one simple step: bringing employees together.

Corporate team building is an essential investment for your company’s success. Imagine running a company where the employees don’t get along together.

Now, imagine if they were total strangers, and no one was making an effort to get them to know each other.

That’s where corporate team building comes in.

With a few activities, you can get your team to warm up to each other and create strong bonds. That doesn’t only improve communication, but it also builds trust and creates a positive work culture.

What is Corporate Team Building?

Corporate team building is a series of planned activities that are designed to break the ice within your team, improve relationships, and boost morale. The activities can be indoors, outdoors, in the office, or in an entirely different town.

According to the kind of team building you want to do, you can have a casual outing or a structured session of any activity. As long as it creates a sense of unity and brings your team together, it’s considered a team-building activity.

Back in the day, the team-building culture was a bit lacking, limited to a few ice-breaking questions passed around the group. However, there’s now a huge variety of activities that you can arrange for your team with excellent results.

What is the Purpose of Team Building?

Team building is all about bringing people together. Sometimes, you’ll have employees from different cultural backgrounds or societies, and to have them work in harmony, they should communicate well with each other.

Team-building also boosts team morale, makes it easier to solve conflicts, and gives your company a positive work culture. Let’s see what else:

1. Makes It Easier to Socialize and Make Friends

Having friends at work may increase productivity, and it keeps workmates looking forward to going to work. There are even studies stating that people who have friends at work are more likely to be focused and engaged.

But how will your team socialize and make friends? By engaging in team-building activities. Whether it’s a scavenger hunt or a walking tour, having the team do an activity together increases their chances of forming friends.

That won’t only make your team friendly overall, but it’ll also make them more comfortable approaching their workmates later on.

2. Makes Your Work Culture Positive

Who wants to work in a toxic work environment? No one, and new generations are becoming more aware of the concept of work culture and how it affects them.

Making time for team-building activities makes your company culture positive, especially if your employees manage to make friends through these activities.

3. Increases Employee Retention

A high turnover rate is the one thing no employer wants. As it turns out, satisfied and engaged employees are more likely to stay with a company. If your team building activities are successful, they’ll increase the team spirit and improve communication, creating happier employees.

That, paired with stability and a good salary, is enough for your team to maintain their positions without looking for better opportunities.

Remember, employees who don’t ‘fit in’ or feel like a part of the team are more likely to leave at the first chance.

4. Build Trust Among Your Team

Employees are more likely to be productive and team players if they trust their colleagues. Having your team scramble on a team-building activity, like a scavenger hunt or solving a riddle, builds trust among them and makes them more likely to rely on each other.

If they’ve never spoken to one another, it’ll be hard to communicate in the workplace and discuss ideas. Trust is the missing ingredient that most teams need.

5. Increases Team Morale

When the employees are burnt out for too long without a break, it reflects negatively on their output. Happier and more relaxed employees are more likely to work hard and be productive—and that’s what team building can achieve.

If your team morale is down, you’ll notice that people are coming into work with frowns on their faces, and they can’t wait until it’s time to go home. A simple activity can turn that around and make them more excited to come to work.

6. Breaks the Monotony

Though routines are good for many reasons, they sometimes create a monotony. Going to work every day eventually becomes boring, and you need something to break the monotony.

That’s especially true for employees with desk jobs or jobs that don’t involve much movement or socializing.

A team building activity is a perfect break for the employees to de-stress and have a change of scenes.

7. Promotes Inclusitivty Among Your Team

It’s not always easy to mingle with people from different cultures or backgrounds. People with similar backgrounds will often bond over their upbringing or their hometown. However, when there’s nothing in common, it’s hard to develop healthy communication.

An entertaining team-building activity, like a scavenger hunt or an escape room, will make it easier for your employees to communicate with each other. A fun day at work may be enough to break the cultural barriers that nothing else can.

8. Makes It Easier to Solve Conflicts

There’s yet to be a workplace with zero conflicts. Any team in any company likely has minor conflicts within, and if you’re concerned about it, team building will help.

You can arrange a team-building activity that involves teaming up. If employees who don’t get along well get teamed up, they may soften up to each other. Besides, team building improves communication and builds trust, which will prevent conflicts down the road.

13 Team Building Activities For Work

There’s an endless list of team-building activities that your team can benefit from. Whether you want to go outdoors or have the activity in your office building, there’s an idea tailored for you down here:

1. Go on a Scavenger Hunt

For an innovative team-building activity, you can arrange a scavenger hunt for your team. cityHUNT offers customized scavenger hunts at any location in any city across the states, and you can arrange for everything without leaving your house. A phone call is all you need.

First, you get a discovery call with a consultant from cityHUNT’s staff to get a general idea of the service provided. Then, you can customize it to fit your team and get ready to have the time of your life. They’ll handle all the details for you.

2. Book a Cooking Class

If there’s a local farm or vineyard in your town, you can book a cooking session for the entire team. It’s a relaxed team-building activity that yields fun results!

Your employees can learn to prepare a dish using fresh, seasonal ingredients that they harvest themselves. For these sessions, a professional chef guides the participants through the meal, and all the ingredients are prepared and ready.

It’s a nice team-building activity that doesn’t push people too far outside of their comfort zones, like zip-lining courses.

3. Go to an Escape Room

Escape rooms are the ultimate team activity, where the entire team comes together to try and solve the puzzle. You can book a couple of sessions at an escape room service provider, or, for a more authentic experience, you can create your own escape room.

Choose a park or an area in your office building, find a storyline online to use, and prepare the props, maps, and clues. If you want, you can get a couple of HR employees to help you with planning.

The way escape rooms go, the team has to decode messages and find hidden clues—you can make the game harder by including tools like compasses.

This activity doesn’t only bring the team together, but it also encourages problem-solving.

4. Create a Film or Book Club

If you want an ongoing team-building activity, your best bet is to create a film or book club. These never fail to engage teammates, and you can assign one of the employees to be a moderator.

To keep things in order, you can assign one weekly session to discuss a movie. If it’s a book, you can have the session every two weeks—or vary it according to the book’s length.

It’s a great way to allow employees to bond over their similar tastes and have fun while at work.

5. Arrange a Volunteering Day

Giving back to the community is one of the best team-building activities you can do with your team. Arrange a volunteering day where your employees get to support a meaningful cause.

For example, you can accompany the team to a food bank to help with the meals. Or, you can do something easier to arrange like cleaning a public park.

One of the best ways to give back to the community is to spend time at a care facility—these ideas will strengthen the bonds in your team and teach them about community work.

6. Throw a DIY Craft Workshop

If you don’t want to leave the office, you can set up stations for DIY crafts and make the team-building activity a part of the working day. There are plenty of crafts you can include in the session, such as designing custom tote bags, painting on small canvas, making scented candles, or even painting terracotta pots.

If the holidays are closing in, you can create themed workshops. Such activities create a relaxed atmosphere where your employees get to blow off some steam and have casual talks with each other.

7. Do Trivia Rounds

Nothing creates friends better than a friendly competition! If you want a quick team-building activity that doesn’t involve leaving the office, you can throw trivia rounds.

Divide into categories and prepare questions, then assign a moderator and prepare the teams. You can also create a company-specific category to test the employees’ knowledge.

If you want to up your game, turn the trivia rounds into a full-blown game of Office Olympics. We’re taking office chair races and ping pong tosses. Prepare medals to give away at the end for more competitiveness!

8. Arrange a Skill Sharing Session

Everyone has a hidden skill somewhere, and some people have talents and hobbies that they’re open about. If it’s not possible to arrange a long team-building activity, you can give the employees a two-hour session off for a skill-sharing session.

First, you’ll gather volunteers who are ready to talk about their skills and teach their teammates. Then, you’ll arrange a time and a room in the office.

You can assign the volunteers to get the supplies needed for the session. For example, if someone’s skill is origami, they can bring the supplies needed for the team to learn about it.

9. Create a Food Truck Tour

Food trucks have their own allure! If you want an out-of-the-box team-building idea, you can arrange a food truck tour for your team. Choose a neighborhood or an event with several food trucks—that’s the first part of arranging the tour.

Then, collect availability and choose the day with the most votes. The tour involves moving from one food truck to another and trying different dishes together.

You can create small food passports for everyone to track what they try, and in the end, have everyone vote for the best meal they ate.

Eating together is the ultimate team-building activity, and visiting multiple food trucks to eat makes the journey all the more fun!

10. Throw a Sports Tournament

If you want to emphasize the importance of sports and build your team at the same time, you can throw a sports tournament. Choose the most appropriate sport for the age range of your team, whether it’s kickball, soccer, or even tennis.

For smaller groups, tennis, padel, and pickleball are ideal choices. Meanwhile, volleyball and soccer are better for larger groups.

You can also choose a non-traditional game for the tournament, like tug-of-war. The best thing about these games is that they require teams, so your employees will get a chance to play with their teammates and have fun.

11. Go on an Adventure

If it’s appropriate for your team, you can choose an adventurous challenge for the team-building activity. Ideas like rock climbing and zip-lining will push your team outside of their comfort zone and teach them something new.

You can choose a place that offers sessions for beginners and book for the entire team. Or, if you prefer a more grounded option, you can arrange a hike on an easy trail. Make it more interesting by preparing nature-themed puzzles to solve along the way, or create a final goal that the team can look forward to.

The only problem with this kind of activity is that you may find some employees reluctant to join—especially if they’re old or suffer from joint issues. It’s better to do a survey beforehand to gauge the number of attendees.

12. Board Game Tournament

If the fitness level of your team doesn’t allow for an adventurous challenge or a sports tournament, you can have a competition of a more relaxed nature: a board game tournament.

It’s a relaxed, fun way to encourage team bonding. You can get games like Monopoly, Scrabble, Pandemic, and Codenames. Try to get a good variety to appeal to all tastes, and create tournament brackets where teams rotate through different games.

Count the points that each team collects, and the team with the most points wins. You should also assign a prize or a medal to make the competition worth it.

If you want to keep the tournament’s time managed correctly, you can set a timer for each round. We’d also suggest getting snacks and drinks to keep the atmosphere fun and casual. Add an extra layer of fun by awarding random prizes for categories like Most Hilarious Move or Most Overthinking Player!

13. Solve a Murder Mystery Game

A murder mystery game is a classic, intriguing way to build your team. You can hire a professional facilitator or buy a pre-designed kit for the activity.

To make it feel as authentic as possible, assign each team member a role, like detectives, witnesses, and suspects. Provide all of them with character profiles and objectives, then allow the teams to work together to uncover clues and solve the mystery.

If you want to make the experience more immersive, you can set the scene with themed decorations, like a haunted mansion or something like that.

A murder mystery may be a bit challenging to arrange, but it’s a lot of fun for everyone involved. If the office isn’t large enough, you can rent a venue or have it outdoors.