Additional Team Building Resources

Fun Team Building—Ideas and Benefits for Your Team

If you want to create a positive and exciting work environment, include fun team building activities in your work schedule! Your employees, work culture, and company will benefit from some additional smiles and laughs, and you’ll see better retention rates on your team. Keep reading for more on fun team building and what you can gain from it!

How fun team building activities benefit your team

Fun team building activities aren’t just a great way to spend half a day or a meeting—they can actually benefit your team both in the office and in their personal lives! Making space for your employees to have fun at work boosts their creativity, productivity, and desire to collaborate with their teammates, and makes them feel appreciated. Fun team building activities can also contribute to lower stress levels and will build a healthy work environment that employees will look forward to being a part of each day.

Team building activities in general are great ways to improve your team’s overall performance at work. These kinds of activities can help employees communicate with each other, learn new problem-solving skills, increase employee retention rates, and more.

They can also increase employee engagement, which leads to hard working teams and healthy work cultures. High levels of engagement produce motivated and happy employees, and you will ultimately see your company profits increase because your employees are satisfied. If you can regularly invest in your team, you’ll see benefits in the short-term and long-term.

On the flip side, disengaged employees can put your business at a disadvantage. Low levels of employee engagement have been shown to produce 49% more accidents and 37% more absenteeism, according to studies by Forbes. They also reported that companies with stressed out employees have to pay 46% more in health care costs! If you want to save a little stress and money on your end, it’ll be worthwhile to explore some fun team building options for your office.

Additionally, if you’re looking for a boost in how your employees view their work culture, you may want to seriously consider adding in team building activities that bring in laughter, relaxation, and fun. According to Monster.com, 81% of employees who say their companies are “great” report having a “fun” work environment. If you create time and allocate part of your budget for fun team building activities, you’ll see a positive and healthy boost in the workplace.

The UK company Ciphr found six key benefits to having fun at work:

Happy employees are healthier.
Communication and collaboration improve.
Creativity grows.
Fun attracts an audience and clients to your brand.
Employees are more productive.
Fun encourages employees to advocate for your company.

If you want a healthy workplace that others want to be part of, incorporate some fun into your routine! Fun team building exercises are the best way to do that—you’ll strengthen your team’s skills and ability to work together while boosting their perspective of your company.

How can you make a team meeting fun?

Believe it or not, meetings can be fun! You can add in fun team building exercises at the beginning of your meeting, hold your meeting off-site, celebrate team accomplishments, play online games, and more. What’s great about intentionally making a meeting fun is that you will see higher levels of engagement and participation because your team isn’t experiencing the same ol’ meeting that they might have been expecting.

Having fun in a meeting doesn’t take away from a meeting being effective. Fun team meetings can actually hold employees’ attention and keep them on the same page as you go through your agenda. You’ll find that your team will remember the fun you had at the meeting, the content that you talked about, and the problems that you solved.

If you’re scheduling meetings for team onboarding, it’s key that you include fun elements. Since team onboarding welcomes new hires into your office and into your team, you’ll want to present a healthy and great work culture that they’re stepping into. Fun team meetings—including ice breakers, team building activities, happy hours, and tours—will help them get a feel for their new job while giving them a positive experience.

The best way to make a team meeting fun is to use the right team building activities! Activities can last anywhere from 5 minutes to half a day. All it takes is 5 minutes of fun team building to see a boost in employee engagement, work productivity, team trust, and employee retention. Regularly include team building into your work schedule, whether it’s icebreakers every week or a big team meeting once a month. The more you can develop skills through team building, the stronger your team will be!

16 Fun Team Building Activities

When you can encourage your team with a fun team building activity, it’s worth the time and effort to put it on! Of course, take some time to brainstorm what might work best for your team given their interests and needs, but if you need some help getting started on your brainstorming, we can help.

We’ve got some of the best fun team building activities and fun team events that will improve your team’s communication, introduce new team members, increase creativity, and boost morale!

Best Team Building Activities for Better Communication

These fun activities will build communication skills for your teammates and help them learn how to collaborate well with one another. A couple of these activities are familiar, but make sure you take time to explain each activity well so there’s no confusion!

1. Taboo

Challenge your team’s vocabulary and ability to brainstorm quickly as they try to guess one word without being able to describe it using other specific words.

Ideal Group Size: 2 teams of 3–8 people
Difficulty: 4/5
Materials Needed: Taboo board game or you can make your own game cards. If you make your own, make sure you search for ideas on Pinterest or take time to brainstorm the unspeakable words.
Tips or Guidelines: Since some people play this game a little differently in their own homes, make sure you are clear about the rules (check out this YouTube video with a quick explanation of the game). If you can, divide teams so your more competitive players don’t take over one particular team. For DIY Taboo games, you can make the answers specific to your office or industry.

2. Minefield

Strengthen your team’s ability to communicate with and trust each other as one teammate leads their blindfolded partner through an obstacle course.

Ideal Group Size: 6–20 people, or 3–10 teams of two
Difficulty: 4/5
Materials Needed: Items for an obstacle course, including big items like office furniture
Tips or Guidelines: Break your team into smaller teams of two. One person will be the guide and the other will be blindfolded. The guide isn’t allowed to touch their partner, only direct him or her with spoken instructions. You can make this a kind of relay race by putting the teams of two into two larger teams as well.

3. Blind Drawing

Your team will grow in communication and collaboration and will break out some creative skills as they try to guess what their teammates are drawing while blindfolded.

Ideal Group Size: Smaller teams of 2–4 people
Difficulty: 2/5
Materials Needed: Paper and pens

Tips or Guidelines: One person will receive a prompt on what to draw (something simple, like a spider or a house, will do the trick!). Their team will gather around the artist

as he or she starts drawing and will guess what the picture will be. Set a timer, and the team that guesses their drawing before the timer goes off wins!

4. Fishbowl

This guessing game will flex your team’s memory muscles and boost their communication with each other.

Ideal Group Size: 6–30 people, split up into even teams
Difficulty: 5/5
Materials Needed: Pens, scraps of paper to write names on, a timer, and 2 large bowls
Tips or Guidelines: This game has 3 rounds: a charades round, a one-word round, and an acting round. Each person will write 3 celebrities or well-known movie characters on slips of paper, fold them up, and throw them into one bowl. Teams will each get 30 seconds to pull names from the bowl and get their team to guess the person on the paper. After a correct guess, the paper goes into the empty bowl, and when the first bowl is empty, the next round (either one-word or acting) begins! For each correct guess, the team gets a point.

We suggest booking a large conference room for this activity and allowing at least 30 minutes of game time. Ask your team members to write in legible handwriting, and offer a prize for the team with the most points at the end of the game!

Best Team Building Activities for New Team Members

As your team grows with new employees, you’ll want to build camaraderie and connectedness as soon as possible. These activities can be for your whole team, or you can even use them as team onboarding activities. Your new hires will be excited for their job ahead after doing a few of these!

5. Team Happy Hour

Strengthen your team’s relational ties, especially with new team members, by giving them time and space to organically get to know each other.

Ideal Group Size: 4 or more
Difficulty: 0/5
Materials Needed: Event space (or virtual room like Zoom), snacks and drinks, music
Tips or Guidelines: As a manager, make sure you still engage with the rest of your team. You can leave out conversation prompts for teams with several new employees or depending on your team.

6. Office Trivia

Introduce new team members to your workspace with a trivia game about their new office!

Ideal Group Size: Teams of no more than 5
Difficulty: 3/5
Materials Needed: Trivia questions about your workspace, paper to write down answers
Tips or Guidelines: Since your new hire won’t be familiar with your workspace or office culture, strategically place them on a fun trivia team that will include them. You can throw in a couple of questions that are more universally known about offices or even questions about the show The Office!

7. Two Truths and a Lie

Teammates will get to share about themselves in this fun little guessing game.

Ideal Group Size: Any
Difficulty: None
Materials Needed: None
Tips or Guidelines: While there are a few different ways to play this game, one that would be great for new team members is for everyone to go around the room and have one-on-one conversations with one another. Each person has to guess the untrue statement, and once they get it right, they can go speak to another person.

8. Mad Libs

Create a mad libs game that can introduce your new hire to the rest of the team. Have your other teammates fill in the blanks and wait for the laughs!

Ideal Group Size: At least 5 people
Difficulty: 2/5
Materials Needed: Blank mad libs sheets and pens
Tips or Guidelines: Create your own mad libs script that your new hire can read out loud like it’s an introduction speech. Include fun things like, “I have a _____ (adj.) ____ (noun) for a pet and its favorite food is ____ (noun).”

Best Team Building Activities for Boosting Creativity

These activities allow your team to have some fun while creating, collaborating, and solving problems. Some of these will put your team’s skills to the test, while others might put them out of their comfort zone for a little bit! Encourage them with prizes, and affirmation, and a few days after the activities, remind them of how much fun they had.

9. Play an Improv Game

This will stretch your team’s imagination and allow for some really good laughs!

Ideal Group Size: Depends on the games chosen
Difficulty: 4/5
Materials Needed: Depends on the games chosen
Tips or Guidelines: If your team is green in improv, read through this page of improv games for beginners and find which game would work for you! Play a variety of games, at least 2 or 3 for each activity time, and set a time limit for each one so you can get through different kinds of games.

10. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower

Teammates will have to get innovative to build a strong “tower” made of uncooked spaghetti, marshmallows, and other office supplies.

Ideal Group Size: Groups of 3–5 people
Difficulty: 4/5
Materials Needed: Uncooked spaghetti noodles, marshmallows for each team, random office supplies like scotch tape, index cards, and binder clips
Tips or Guidelines: Give your team plenty of space for this game! Set a timer for 5 minutes and see who finishes the tallest tower first. It must be able to stand on its own and hold the weight of a marshmallow. You can up the challenge by adding weight or taking away certain office materials, like pens and pencils.

11. Paper Plane Contest

Cheer each member of your team on as they create and fold a paper airplane that will hopefully fly the furthest!

Ideal Group Size: Any
Difficulty: 1/5
Materials Needed: Plenty of paper—you can use scrap paper as well
Tips or Guidelines: Play this game inside! You don’t want the wind taking your creations into the trees, and it will be easier to clean up. Choose people from other teams to be the judges, and you can even create a rating scale for other fun things the planes might do, such as loops or crashes.

12. Human Knot

Teammates will grab hands at random, then untangle themselves from the knot, building creativity, communication, and problem-solving skills!

Ideal Group Size: At least 5 people
Difficulty: 4/5
Materials Needed: None
Tips or Guidelines: If you have a bigger team to work with, start them off in small groups for the first round, and make it more challenging by combining those groups afterward. This game might require some flexibility, so although teams can’t let go of each other’s hands as they untangle their knot, give them some grace if they have to let go momentarily.

Best Team Building Activities for Boosting Morale

Everyone needs a morale boost every once in a while! The fun activities below will build positivity in your team and reduce their stress levels.

13. Mindfulness Session

Reduce stress and anxiety levels by allowing your team to relax and focus on building good mental health practices

Ideal Group Size: Any
Difficulty: None
Materials Needed: Access to meditation audio or video
Tips or Guidelines: When introducing this activity for the first time, start your team off with a short amount of time like 5 or 10 minutes. If they give good feedback on mindfulness, consider increasing the time! Additionally, make sure you do this activity in a space without distractions or somewhere that isn’t too loud. If you have a grassy area outside of your office, this might be a perfect chance to get outside while lowering stress.

14. Volunteer Together

Serving your community with your team gives them a chance to contribute to something larger than themselves.

Ideal Group Size: Any
Difficulty: 2/5
Materials Needed: None
Tips or Guidelines: Team up with a local organization that needs or sends volunteers. Poll your team for what kind of community service they would like to participate in. Your poll should include a variety of opportunities, considering what is possible for your teammates and what they’re interested in. You may have to take a half-day or most of the day to volunteer.

15. Puzzle Race

Your team will race to finish a children’s puzzle first, strengthening teamwork and letting them have some fun.

Ideal Group Size: Small teams of 2–3 people
Difficulty: 3/5
Materials Needed: Children’s puzzles, 50 pieces or less, for each team
Tips or Guidelines: Bring in a fun and “childish” aspect to this activity by playing Disney songs or playing cartoons in the background. Encourage your team as they dig for pieces, and offer prizes to the winners.

16. Show and Tell

Your team can encourage one another through this activity while sharing things about themselves, building relational connection and trust.

Ideal Group Size: Any
Difficulty: None
Materials Needed: None
Tips or Guidelines: Encourage your team to bring something that they’re proud of, like a piece of art they created or a shirt with a happy memory. Employees can offer feedback or excitement as their teammates bring up what they brought. Keep each show-and-tell moment to a short timeframe, and let your team know how long they have in front of everyone before the day you do the activity.

Fun Team Questions

If you want to build trust and relational connection within your team, consider using team questions. Include questions about your team’s families, hobbies, education, partners, music preferences, and more to really allow employees to get to know each other. While there are some personal questions to avoid, you can get really creative and have fun with this game! Some fun examples include:

What is your “comfort album”?
Who is your favorite movie villain?
What is your favorite vacation memory?
Apple or Microsoft?
The beach or the mountains?

Use these kinds of questions as icebreakers for your next meeting. You can start your meeting off with a few icebreaker questions that may or may not be related to the main topic of your meeting. As you go around the room and allow your team to open up a little, you’ll see some connections being made between teammates.

For some of the best team questions, make sure you read through our list of 160 icebreaker questions!

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Fun Virtual Team Building

Fun team building shouldn’t be reserved for in-person teams! Because so much of the workforce now is remote, it’s essential that they still feel connected, even while physically dispersed. Team building is a great way to keep them engaged in their work even if other distractions might head their way in their WFH setup.

If you can build fun remote team building activities into your schedule on a regular basis, you’ll begin to see a positive difference with your virtual team. Virtual team building can help reduce loneliness, create stronger relationships, improve collaboration, and more!

Some options include:

For more ideas and tips, visit our page on virtual team building!

Let’s have some fun!

Now that you’ve got the ideas and the tools behind fun team building activities, add them to your team’s schedule! Make sure you get feedback for every activity or event that you do, but you can be sure that your employees will thank you for breaking up a workday to give them a little fun. They might not realize how it’s benefiting them at the moment, but you’ll see a positive difference and be encouraged to keep growing your team.