Building the right corporate culture always begins with how engaged employees are with each other and with the mission and values of the brand. So we've put together some corporate team building activities to help you build great team cultures.
It doesn't matter if it's a new team or an old team. Having challenging yet fun team-building activities can be a great way to increase camaraderie, get people involved, encourage creative thinking, improve collaboration when pursuing a common goal, and build trust.
However, it can be difficult to foster team trust and employee engagement when everyone is caught up in their own silos, so these ideas will challenge large or small teams to work together and enable them to have a great time no matter what group size— whether a small group or large groups.
The great news is that with the right team-building exercise, you’ll be able to encourage a level of interaction that otherwise wouldn’t happen and remind everyone that they all belong to one team. Moreover, these events will help strengthen camaraderie, improve critical thinking, and give your team a great time!
Check out the following team-building activities to give your corporate culture, team-building event, or team outing the shot in the arm it needs.
So let's get the entire team together and prepare for a fun way of turning the company or department into a well-oiled machine! If your team is working remotely at the moment then you should check out our best fun games and activities for remote teams. In there you'll find 100 great ideas with instructions that you can try with your newly remote team.
1) Baby photos
Objective: To get employees to guess which baby photo is of who
Participants: 10 to 30 people
Duration: 30 minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Materials: Everyone should bring in a baby photo
This is one of our top team building activities for corporate teams because it gets laughs and gets employees to feel closer to each other. Often, many people and corporate teams place too much emphasis on being serious; sometimes, they just need to relax and have fun!
Super super simple, and super super fun! It does take some preparation from your team though
Instructions
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Get everyone to bring in a baby photo of themselves, or get them to email you a copy.
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Set the baby pictures out on a large table or wall (so everyone can clearly see them).
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The aim is that everyone in the entire group must guess which baby photo is who.
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The winner is the person with the most correct answers - give them a prize, we suggest something edible!.
2) Who is it?
Objective: Team Bonding & Get To Know One Another
Participants: 4 to 20
Duration: 45 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Materials: Box or hat and pen and paper for each participant
A unique psychological quirk we all have is that the more you know about another person the more likely you are to develop a sense of trust and connection to them.
Help your team members get to know each other beyond their roles and responsibilities at work by playing this quick and fun activity.
Instructions
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Have everyone write a fun little-known fact about themselves (the crazier the better) on a piece of paper.
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Place the secret in a box or hat.
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Every secret is then pulled out of the box and read aloud, with everyone having to guess 'my name' to who they think each fact belongs to.
3) Human bingo
Objective: To get employees moving around the room and find out traits about each other
Participants: 10 to 30 people
Duration: 35 minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Materials: Human Bingo cards
If you’ve done your reading, you’ll have noticed that human bingo appears numerous times on our blog posts as one of our all-time favourite activities.
We love it because it's fun, active and introduces new recruits to each other on a personal level, without being too intimate.
Instructions
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Give each participant a bingo card, either homemade or found on the internet, and a pen.
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Explain that each team gets 30 minutes to mingle with each other. During this time, they should be introducing themselves to one other and finding people who match the traits on the bingo card.
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Once they have found one person with the correct trait, members must put the person’s name in the corresponding box, or have the person sign the appropriate square.
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Just like a normal game of bingo, the clock continues to tick until the first person to fill five boxes across or down yells “Bingo”.
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If you want the game to go on for a little longer, you could have multiple opportunities to win. For example, the first person to get a full horizontal line, the first to get a vertical line and then the first to get a full house. To involve employees even more in the game, perhaps ask them at the beginning what they think a completed game should be.
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To make the game more exciting and motivating, have a prize (or prizes, if playing the longer game) ready to give the winning team. In our opinion, a bottle of nice wine will do but you could always offer gift vouchers.
4) Nerf battle royale
Objective: Creative problem solving skills, communication skills, team bonding and improving collaboration in teams
Participants: 5 to 20
Duration: 30 minutes to 4 hours
Difficulty: Hard
Materials: Nerf guns
Who remembers Nerf guns? My memories of them aren’t the fondest - my brother’s used to attack me with them all the time!
However, in a more controlled (and hopefully more mature) manner, nerf gun wars are actually a great way to get everyone loosening up and create a friendly atmosphere.
Instructions
The instructions are really quite simple. If you happen to work out of a large office building, transform your workplace into a battleground and your employees into soldiers by arming them with an endless array of Nerf guns.
You can play a variety of games like “Capture the Flag”, “Protect the President” or “Assassins” to encourage any variety of skills like communication, collaboration and even problem solving!
5) The buddy system
Objective: Encourage new employees to get to know each other one on one
Participants: As many as you like!
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Materials: None
A great way to onboard new hires and immediately make them feel supported in the workplace is to take a page out of Culture Amp’s book with their “buddy system.”
Studies have shown that introducing a buddy scheme was received positively. Specifically, this study looked at the introduction of senior buddy schemes, which is what we suggest using.
It has also been found that buddy schemes in organisations improve the ‘wellness’ of individuals and helps them to prepare for change. Based on this, we feel that every organisation should have an effective buddy scheme implemented.
We love this team building activity because it is easy to organise, but goes a long way in building a company culture that brings out the best in everyone.
Instructions
Again, the instructions are super simple. Ask a team leader or one person from the senior executive to volunteer some of their time to be a buddy to new hires.
New hires are then randomly paired up with a volunteer and between the two they’ll arrange a time that works for the both of them to catch up and meet with one another for something simple like coffee or lunch.
During the catch up, give them a number of ice breaker questions and have each pair take turns to ask questions and answer them. You can also play two truths and one lie or ask participants to exchange their favorite memories at work or at home. Managers can also share interesting office trivia questions that new hires would have never known on their first week at the job. You don't have to have a time limit to these catch ups. The important thing is that the new hires get to know their supervisors.
This gives new hires the chance to quickly build relationships within the company and learn more about the company culture itself and its values.
While also giving the senior management the ability to learn about their growing team and potentially even provide mentorship and guidance.
6) Mouse Trap
Objective: To show teams that everyone from a different department has something to contribute to a project
Participants: 6 or more
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
Difficulty: High
Materials: Small items (e.g., marbles, scissors, paper, toilet paper rolls, sticks, silverware)
Based on the childhood game, “mouse trap” is a fun and energising team activity that gets everyone involved and working together.
It is also a personal favourite of ours because it helps you to suss out the natural born problem solvers in your team and it allows you to observe who brings what skills to your team. Based on this, it's a great activity to use for newly formed teams.
Instructions
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Split everyone into teams of about three to five participants.
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Each team should create a machine that uses the items you have provided.
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The idea is that once set in motion, this machine will continue to work without human interaction (e.g., a marble could hit a pencil that falls and hits another ball).
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The team that can create the longest mouse trap, that works for the longest time, wins.
7) Dart Board
Objective: To help teams understand how to deal with emotion
Participants: 3 to 10 people
Duration: 10 to 20 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
Materials: Dartboard, arts, pens and paper
We love darts because it helps release some anger in a controlled way. It encourages everyone to share their feelings, and this promotes effective emotional regulation.
This is so important to include in team building activities because research has shown that effective emotional regulation abilities of group members affect how they manage tasks and how they resolve team conflicts.
Disclaimer: make sure the dartboard is set up in a safe place!
Instructions
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Get everyone in your team to draw something that makes them angry.
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Pin each person's picture to the dartboard.
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Get everyone to throw their dart at their picture.
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Once everyone has thrown their dart, the picture is torn and destroyed.
8) Break It Away
Objective: To help team members to let go of issues
Participants: 3 or more
Duration: 10 to 20 minutes
Difficulty: Hard
Materials: Old bottles, a safe place to break bottles, something to stop up the bottle (e.g., a cork), a wad of paper (or cotton) and some safety goggles
We like this team building activity for the same reason we like Darts. It allows employees to let go of things, allows team members to stop holding grudges, and encourages healthy emotional regulation.
We suggest using this activity when you can feel the tension in your team, or when you want to remove distractions.
Another (boring) disclaimer… Please be careful whilst doing this, we all know that throwing glass bottles around can be dangerous!
Instructions
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Have each team member think about something that has made them mad or irritated.
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Each team member should yell whatever it is into the empty bottle and they should then put a stop to the bottle.
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After, find a safe place to throw the bottles so that they can break.
9) Board Games
Objective: To have fun, whilst problem solving
Participants: 4 to 20
Duration: 10 minutes to 4 hours
Difficulty: Easy
Materials: Board games
This activity is super simple - board games. Know what they are?
Know how to find the instructions in the box? Great, now go play some with your team!
Some of our favourites:
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Risk
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Settlers of Catan
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Monopoly
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Game of Life
10) Catchphrase
Objective: To promote communication and teamwork
Participants: 6 to 20 people
Duration: 20 minutes
Difficulty: Medium
Materials: None
‘Catchphrase’, also known as charades, is a family favourite.
We love it because it’s fun and light-hearted, whilst still being professional.
It’s a great way to get everyone up, get everyone involved and push them out of their comfort zone.
Instructions
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Form two teams.
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Pick a theme for the game.
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Each team member takes it in turns to go to the front and act out something.
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Keep switching team players back and forth.
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Whoever has the most points at the end wins.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are examples of corporate culture?
In Meetly they discuss great examples of company culture.
For example:
"Twitter is the true definition of a team-orientated environment that employees rave about. The employees enjoy health and fitness classes, rooftop meetings, and continued education through Twitter University. The friendly environment also allows for feedback at all levels of management through designated meetings. The biggest reason Twitter is one of the top examples of company culture? People that work at Twitter believe what they’re doing matters. That will always be the biggest boost to productivity."
How do you create a corporate culture?
Corporate culture comes from the behavior of your management and employees. It reflects on your company's values and beliefs in and out of the environment. Corporate culture is created by the people that work within each organization. In 2021, companies are discovering innovative ways to create a company culture and address issues within the workplace. Organizations are putting emphasis on how to create a thriving environment for their employees.
What is a good corporate culture?
This question can be answered in so many ways depending on what each person is looking for. However, some great basic qualities that many look for in company culture are; positive outlooks, collaboration, strong company values, and a work-life balance.
Final Words
Whether it be one of our ideas above, an escape room, or even a scavenger hunt; these are all guaranteed to boost the morale of your team or corporation.
And there you have it. Those are our favourite corporate team building activities. We hope you've liked our list!
