Additional Team Building Resources

Fun Office Games to Try from Trivia to Team Building

Whether you’re bored in the office or interested in discovering some fun team building activities, you’re in the right place. Office games are an excellent way to have fun with your team while building bonds that encourage better working relationships. Try these games and activities to encourage your team to communicate and collaborate while having fun and bonding as a team.

You may be asking, “How do I make Fridays fun at work?” Well, you can make Fridays fun by incorporating office games into your weekly routine! Office games don’t have to take long and can serve as a quick and engaging icebreaker before a meeting. Office games are also a great way to make your next event or holiday party super memorable.

They can be done virtually or in-person — either way, incorporating fun team building games is one of the best (and most functional) ways to engage your people. You’ll have a blast while team building and increasing communication, connection, and camaraderie among team members.

It’s a wonder more teams don’t play games to encourage team building. In fact, a recent survey suggests that 73% of employees wish their companies would invest more in team building. Keeping your employees happy with reduce turnover and increase retention!

How Does Playing Office Games Encourage Teamwork?

Through games, your team can practice communicating under pressure, solving problems, brainstorming solutions, and determining responsibility for tasks. Do these skills sound familiar? They should. Games can mimic the kinds of behaviors and skills that teams need and often use in the workplace.

Any intentional time you spend with your team counts as team building and encouraging teamwork. This can take shape as activities, games, conversations, or even week-long retreats. But team building goes beyond just being together in the office. It requires an intentional and sustained effort. And when you do it right, team building has a host of benefits.

Boosts Morale

Your team will feel more connected to one another, which helps build confidence and enthusiasm for working together and working for your company.

Improves Communication

Games often force people to think and communicate under the pressure of time. Team members will have to practice speaking quickly and clearly so that others can understand.

Encourages Problem-Solving Skills

At the core, every game asks you to solve a problem or face a challenge — that’s the game. When you solve problems as a group, your team must rally together and tap into each person’s skillset in order to win. Often, teams find that hidden skills and different ways of thinking emerge under the pressure to solve a problem to ensure victory.

Promotes Collaboration

With the need to communicate and problem-solve towards a common goal, office games naturally encourage collaboration. Any organization needs to be able to leverage knowledge from all teams and team members in order to survive. Games are a fun and easy way to demonstrate to teams the importance of collaborating to achieve outcomes.

21 Fun Office Games for Employees

Team building activities are both fun and useful for cultivating high-performing teams. You’ll boost morale, engage your team, and make memories that keep you laughing for years to come.

Quick Fun Office Games

Team building doesn’t have to take long to have a lasting impact. These easy games only take a minute or two to set up and explain, and 10 minutes or less to play. These activities can also be adjusted to last only as long as you need them to.

1. Heads Up!

A fun twist on charades, Heads Up! requires participants to guess the word on their phone screen (placed on the forehead) as team members shout (or act) out clues. Popularized by Ellen DeGeneres, Heads Up! is one of the most fun word-guessing games out there. The mobile app includes dozens of decks with every kind of topic including movies, shows, time periods, superstars, animals, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and more! If none of the included decks catch your eye, teams can even design their own. Try creating your own company history deck!

Set up is simple, just have someone download the app! If your team is interested in capturing memories, the Heads Up! app includes the option to film as team members work to provide clues.

2. Psych!

Psych! is a hilarious game that tests your ability to think strategically and articulate clearly. Players try to outwit one another by sharing fictional, but seemingly factual answers to questions and prompts in an attempt to confuse other players and entice them to pick a false answer instead of the correct one. Score points by confusing other players or selecting the right answer.

Set up is quick and easy — just have everyone download the app. Psych! features different game options including movie plots, book titles, and more. Can your team spot the lies?

3. Jenga

How does your team stack up against the laws of gravity? Jenga is the classic block-stacking, stack-crashing party game guaranteed to bring the laughs (and probably tears) out of your team. Once the blocks are assembled into a tower, team members take turns pulling them out one by one until it all comes crashing down. Who has the steadiest hand? Find out by playing Jenga with your team!

Want to kick things up a notch? Clear a large space and try the giant version of Jenga. You can also add a time limit so players are forced to move quickly through each round.

4. Two Truths and a Lie

Do you really know the members of your team? Two tTruths and a lLie is an easy-to-explain game and requires no set up or materials.

Have team members take turns sharing two truths and a lie about themselves and encourage everyone to guess the lie. For added fun, you can have team members provide a brief explanation and justification for their selection before the right answer is revealed.

If you want to incorporate some company history and trivia, try creating a list of Two Truths and a Lie about the organization and see who knows the company best!

5. Telephone

Test the communication skills on your team. Grab your team and sit in a circle. Pick one person to start and have them whisper a sentence in the ear of the person to their left. Each person will then whisper what they heard to the person to their left. Here’s the trick: players can only say the sentence once. Continue going around the room until you reach the last person who will then say the sentence out loud. The team wins if the phrase remains unchanged from start to finish.

6. Paper Toss Basketball

Any basketball fans on your team? Sometimes team building only requires some paper and a garbage can to have fun. Play as individuals or split into groups and take turns shooting paper balls into the garbage can. Score points by making it inside the can.

If you want to kick things up a notch, move the can back one to two feet after each round. As the goal gets farther, increase the points earned for each successful toss. Keep score and select the winner based on the highest score at the end!

7. And Suddenly…

Create a bit of drama with this engaging storytelling game for groups. In a circle, each player will tell a few sentences of a story and end their contribution with “…and suddenly.” The next player will pick up where they left off and add some more to the story.

Here’s how a sample game might start:

Player 1: Once upon a time, a man was hurrying down the street and needed to cut through a dark alley to get to his destination faster. He turned the corner down the nearest alley and suddenly….

Player 2: And suddenly, a large person in a clown costume leapt out from behind the dumpster! Startled, the man reached into his coat pocket and suddenly…

You can choose to end the game after every person goes once or twice. It’s up to you! This easy storytelling activity is sure to bring the laughs and explore the creativity of all the members of your team.

8. Charades

Most people have heard of or played charades — it’s popular for good reason. Your team will have a blast as folks take turns acting out words and phrases for others to guess. To make things a bit easier, choose a theme that the words will center around. For example, all the words are related to holidays, the company, office work, school, or pop culture.

Find a list of words online or create your own. Capture these words on slips of paper that can be picked from a hat or jar. You can play in groups or as individuals.

Group play

Form teams and have a single team member pick a word. This team member will act it out for their group. Earn points when your team guesses the correct word or phrase being performed. But be quick, you only have 60 seconds to act it out for your team.

To raise the stakes, have teams compete simultaneously to guess the same word. Which actor will communicate the best and fastest?

Individuals

Have one person pick a word and anyone on the team can guess the answer! Keep score for each individual and see who has the most points at the end. This style of gameplay might be best suited for smaller teams.

9. Guess The Baby

Guess The Baby is a fun game that can be played either in person or virtually. It requires a little planning in advance. Ask your team to submit baby pictures and then take turns guessing who each picture belongs to. Whoever gets the most correct answers wins!

You can put a spin on this game by having folks submit other things for the team to guess as well. Here are some additional ideas:

Favorite book
Favorite movie
First concert
A popular movie they have not seen
First job

You’ll learn an interesting fact about your team members while having fun with this quick and easy game.

10. Pictionary

Pictionary is known as the game of “quick sketches and hilarious guesses”! But you don’t need to be an artist to play. All you need to do is split into teams and grab pen, paper, and the board game. The goal of Pictionary is to guess what the drawer is drawing. Correct guesses allow your team to move across the game board — first to reach the end wins!

The game provides a list of cards, but don’t hesitate to create your own office-themed word list. Here are some ideas:

Computer
Stapler
Marketing
Board of Directors
Business card
Fax
Email

11. Scattergories

Stir up friendly competition by having teams play this classic game. Players will compete against each other by creating lists of words that all start with the same letter. In Scattergories, you score points for every word you can think of that no one else listed.

12. Herd Mentality

Unlike Scattergories, Herd Mentality is the party game that tests your ability to think like the crowd. In other words, the goal for this competition is to think like the herd! If your answer to a prompt is the odd one out, you don’t score points. Score points by having the same answer as the majority

Game prompts include fun questions like:

Name a food with a hole in it
What’s the best thing to come out of France?
Name a country that starts with the letter B

Can you guess what everyone on your team will write down?

Trivia Games for the Office

Can you ever go wrong with a game of trivia? Probably not. With trivia, the possibilities and levels of fun are truly limitless. Trivia is a fantastic way to connect teams.

One of the best things about group trivia is the ability to tap into different areas of expertise within a team. You can keep it casual with pop culture topics or test knowledge of history. You can even use trivia as a fun tool to measure and build knowledge about company history, benefit offerings, or policies. Add to the team building fun by buying fun game buzzers for teams to use!

13. Jeopardy!

Mix up your trivia fun with a round of Jeopardy!, a quiz-style competition with general knowledge clues presented as answers and contestants must phrase their response in the form of a question. It is one of the most popular game shows in history.

You can create your own Jeopardy! game online. Split your team into groups and have them collaborate on the right answer. Don’t forget to set the scene with some background music.

14. Trivia Nerd

With thousands of free trivia and games, Trivia Nerd has something for every team. You can explore the vast library of pre-made questions or create your own custom ones in a few easy steps. Whether you’re looking for trivia on Friends, Harry Potter, Disney, Pixar, or Marvel — Trivia Nerd has it all.

15. Crowdpurr

Crowdpurr is a powerful tool for managing trivia games for groups. It’s easy to get started and highly customizable for any team, Crowdpurr is fun to use and perfect for teams who are passionate about trivia and looking to have a good time.

16. Bar None

Bar None helps you host an unforgettable trivia experience for your team. With creative questions, music, and picture rounds, Bar None is designed for maximum fun. Games include a professional host that brings the energy as your team members compete for the top spot.

Trivia is also an excellent tool to connect virtual teams. There are tons of virtual trivia games and ideas that can promote team building and keep your folks engaged even when you can’t be together in person.

Team Building Games for the Office

For those looking for more intentional activities for their team, these are for you. The emphasis on collaboration, communication, and problem solving is higher for these activities.

18. Escape Room

Time and time again, escape rooms have proven to be an excellent team building activity for groups. This puzzle-based game asks groups to work together to discover clues, solve puzzles or riddles, and accomplish tasks in order to reach specific goals, all in a limited amount of time.

By nature, escape rooms encourage teams to collaborate, communicate, and brainstorm together to reach a goal. Escape rooms can be tricky, so no idea is too silly to share and discuss together. Teams have a blast while benefiting from the on-the-spot problem-solving and time-management skills.

In recent history, escape rooms have become more popular and have several locations. But they can also be done virtually. Virtual escape rooms are no different from in-person escape rooms, except that they are experienced via an online video platform like Zoom. Both virtual and in-person escape rooms have themes suitable for every team dynamic, including prison breaks, treasure hunts, art heists, and more.

17. Scavenger Hunt

Whether it’s an egg hunt for Easter or a mad dash for various supplies around the office, scavenger hunts are a great way to generate energy and excitement around team building.

It’s simple. Provide teams with the same list of objects for the hunt. A team wins by finding everything on that list first.

Companies like this can even help make your life easier by helping you organize your scavenger hunt with the help of an app. You can create your own games, add missions, invite players or teams, and even track live progress. You’ll create an unforgettable experience for your people with this easy-to-use tool.

Depending on your office’s location, don’t hesitate to take things outside and encourage teams to hunt for items in the local area. This is a great way to get folks familiar with the surrounding area of the office. If possible, have the hunt end at a local restaurant where you all share a meal to celebrate completion.

19. Murder Mystery

Work as a team to piece together clues to solve a murder! Murder mysteries are a great way to practice working as a team in a fun, collaborative activity. Like an escape room, murder mysteries challenge the group to work together towards one goal — a critical skill for any team.

Online mystery games encourage teams to compete to solve a crime first. With evidence lurking everywhere, your team will have a blast as they race against the clock to decode a dossier of evidence. As an added bonus, you also get a game guide that helps ensure everyone has fun and works together as a team!
Night of Mystery can provide all the materials for your next murder mystery office game. You download the tools, invite your team, and have them follow the simple instructions. You’ll be equipped with a fun theme, designed invitations, and evidence.
Masters of Mystery boasts a wide range of mystery games well-suited for any team. You and your team will be immersed in a world of crime with themes ranging from decade-specific to seasonal to film and novel-inspired.

20. Codenames

Transform your team into spies that can crack a code in this crowd-pleasing party game. Codenames is a simple, yet surprisingly challenging way to test and build communication skills between team members.

Split into two groups and pick a spymaster for each; anyone who isn’t a spymaster will attempt to uncover the secret identities of their agents. The spymaster will provide teams with specific clues to help. To win the game, a team must find all their secret agents first. Be careful though, there’s an assassin that can end the game suddenly if teams mistakenly uncover him!

The team-building brilliance of Codenames lies in its ability to support groups of nearly any size. Once the code is given, groups are encouraged to collaborate and discuss the hidden meaning as a team before sharing the final answer.

If you’re looking to play virtually with your team, you can try Codenames online!

21. Medium

Medium is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. In this game, your team will tap into their mind-reading abilities to access the thoughts of other players. In pairs, your team will be asked to find a word that connects two words — the medium — and then say that connecting word out loud simultaneously.

Here’s an example:

Word 1: Taco

Word 2: Beach

On the count of three, your team members might say, “Shell!”

Through Medium, you’ll encourage team members to consider what the other person might be thinking. What shared words or frames of reference can help form a connection?

Conclusion

Here’s the net-net: Everyone loves games and team building is critical for every team. Why not combine the two for a memorable, team building activity? Team building doesn’t have to be labor-intensive or involve any trust falls. You can have fun building morale, improving communication, and encouraging problem-solving through the games most people are already familiar with. Whether it’s a slow Friday afternoon or a way to break the ice and kick off your next team call, incorporate a fun office game!