Team building is the collective term for activities designed to bring coworkers together to foster more valuable relationships. Whether it’s solving problems, thinking creatively or competing against one another, activities are carried out with the aim of tightening team bonds.
The more that an organization focuses on employee well-being, the more everyone in the company’s ecosystem benefits. Happy managers lead to happy employees which in turn leads to happy customers. And all of this results in better business performance.
Here are some fun activities you can do at work to improve your work culture.
- Memory Wall
It is a team-building activity for fostering relationships and share memories together. The idea behind the game is to get your entire group to share positive memories about the workplace.
What you need:
Paper, pens, and tape
How to play:
- Give each team member a few sheets of paper and pens.
- Ask team members to look around the room and write down positive memories of shared experiences in the workplace.
- After 15 minutes, ask team members to draw their favourite memory from the list on a fresh sheet of paper.
- Ask team members to tape their drawings to the wall to create a memory wall.
- Ask for volunteers to expand on the memory in their drawing.
- Back-to-Back Drawing
This game involves one person instructing another how to draw a basic image with often hilarious results. Despite its simplicity, back-to-back drawing is great for improving communication skills and building relationships.
What you need:
Paper, pens, and copies of simple drawings (e.g. car, dog, house, snowman, clown).
How to play:
- Divide your team into pairs and have them sit back-to-back.
- Give one member of each pair a drawing and the other a pen and some paper.
- Have the person with the drawing describe the image without giving away what the image is while the other attempts to draw it.
- Compare the results and talk about how difficult it is to communicate this way (an example of why good communication at work is important).
- Ask partners to swap roles and repeat.
- Salt & Pepper
Salt and Pepper works by covertly writing down a handful of common pairs on sticky notes (i.e. Batman and Robin), sticking them to each of your team member’s back or forehead and then tasking them with finding their match. It’s like What’s My Name, but there’s a twist: once they’ve found out their label, they must find their other half (i.e. Batman and Robin must find each other). It’s an activity that’s great for communication and team bonding, with just the right amount of problem-solving to keep it interesting.
What you need:
Pen and name tags or Post-It notes.
How to play:
- Come up with a list of common pairs.
Here are a few examples:
- Salt and pepper
- Fish and chips
- Batman and Robin
- Peaches and cream
- Bread and butter
- Laurel and Hardy
- King and Queen
- Rock and Roll
- Write the name of one half of a pair on each player and stick it on their back or forehead where they can’t see it.
- Instruct players to ask coworkers yes or no questions to figure out their label.
- Once they know their label, ask them to find their pair.
- The Paper Plane Challenge
This team building game requires teams to build a paper plane that can fly the farthest or for the longest time. With the competitive element, teams have to think beyond conventional paper planes to come up with something that outdoes the rest of the field. This requires teamwork, creativity and a good dose of problem-solving.
What you need:
Paper.
How to play:
- Divide your team into smaller groups.
- Ask them to create a paper plane within a specific time limit (e.g. 10-15 minutes).
- Find a large space to throw the planes and have each team nominate one member as the thrower.
- The plane that flies for the longest distance or spends the most time in the air wins.
Try out these fund activities in your office and let us know if helps to break the barriers amongst the employees. Find out all the office stationeries needed to make these activities possible at Paperline. Visit our office stationery section to explore more:
https://paperlinepaper.com/product-category/office-stationery/