Keeping employees feeling engaged, motivated, and satisfied is crucial to employee retention and organizational success. Team building activities provide a medium for employees to build trust, integrity, and valuable relationships. These activities can bring people together which increases employee engagement with the organization as a whole. This can be especially effective for building connections among an increasingly remote workforce. Following are what we consider the 5 best team building activities to increase employee engagement.
1. Pictionary
Pictionary is one of the most scalable workplace games and can bring 4 groups together quickly as they share common interests while falling over laughing. Keep Pictionary boards around the office and allow employees to play whenever they want. Having workplace games like Pictionary along with a play-friendly attitude in the workplace can increase employee engagement in a variety of ways.
- Increase Communication: The game of Pictionary involves one person drawing and others watching and trying to guess what it is. This leads to oodles of verbal and non verbal communication.
- Build Connections: Pictionary is a team game, and players will exchange ideas and realize commonalities as they compete in a safe and friendly environment.
- Hone Creativity and Quick-Thinking: The artist will have to think quickly and creatively in order to produce the art while the guessers will have to think quickly and creatively to get it right.
Providing a scalable and dynamic game like Pictionary can improve employee engagement in an effective and scalable way. Provide a gift card such as the Engage2Reward™ Choice Card to truly incentivize them to win!
2. Look Up, Look Down
This is an excellent game to bring employees together and allow them to express themselves in novel ways. It’s also one of the best workplace games for employees to get to know one another and recognize each other’s faces. Here’s a summary of how to play the game:
- Select someone to facilitate the group. The facilitator will gather the employees and have them form a circle.
- When the facilitator says look down, everyone should look down, and when the facilitator says to look up, everyone looks up and directly at someone else’s face.
- If two people happen to look directly at each other, they are out of the game.
This is a simple, silly, and effective team building activity to allow employees to get to know each other. Time spent outside the circle is also an opportunity for employees to communicate and form connections.
3. Outdoor Activities
Your team might not be into workplace games. Especially after the mass isolation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are starved for outdoor activities. There are endless options such as paintball, soccer, or tree planting. Some of the best team building activities to increase employee engagement include:
- Team sports: Whether your team is more into soccer or volleyball, organizing a team sport activity can lead to improved communication skills, team bonding, and collaboration.
- Running group: If your team is interested in running, this can be a great way to get together, sweat together, and take in some beautiful sights.
- Scavenger hunt: A classic game of scavenger hunt allows employees to collaborate and use their problem-solving skills in a group setting.
The great outdoors can host some of the best team building activities to increase employee engagement. Rewarding the participants and winners with on-the-spot digital gift cards increases their level of motivation and self-confidence, and builds long-lasting memories and relationships with each other.
4. Social Gatherings
Getting employees together so they can relax, socialize, and get to know each other is a wonderful way to increase employee engagement. Some social gathering ideas for team building include:
- Cooking showdown: Divide employees into subgroups, and assign each group a different type of food they can create. This allows opportunities for team members to collaborate and compete in a friendly context.
- Board game competition: This is another great way to bring the competitive spirit out of your team. Boggle, Jenga, and card games work great. You can also reward third, second, and first place teams with gift cards!
- Dinner: This is the classic team dinner that allows everyone to enjoy a delicious meal and get to know each other in an intimate setting.
Don’t underestimate the power of a simple social gathering; it can have a powerful impact on overall employee engagement and satisfaction.
5. Societal Contribution
Team bonding doesn’t always have to be focused in the context of the company. Reaching out, volunteering, and taking part in charity events is a beautiful way to get together and inspire others with a spirit of giving back. Great options to get your initiative moving forward include:
- Bike Buildathon: This is a popular charity in which participants will work together towards a common goal which is building bikes for disadvantaged children.
- Food Bank: There are many people who struggle to get food on their table. This allows employees an opportunity to work together with the goal of feeding those who are in need.
- Corporate Retreat Field Trip: Take your employees to a local charity where they can learn about how charities work and how they help people in need.
Societal contribution is a humbling experience that can bring the team together to focus on a common goal. Gift cards can be used by employers to not only reward their employees for their good work, but also to be donated to the charities of their choice.
Conclusion
The best team building activities can increase employee engagement and allow them to socialize, compete, and collaborate. As remote work continues to grow in popularity and normalization, employee engagement is becoming more important than ever before. You can gamify these team building activities with gift cards such as the Engage2Reward™ Choice Card for maximum impact.
