There’s nothing like a good team building exercise to boost productivity, morale, motivation, to improve communication, trust and teamwork. Below I have listed 10 exciting and innovative team building exercises, 5 cheap and 5 free, that are sure to strengthen your team.
Paid Team Building Activities
1. Hint Hunt
Solve the puzzles. Escape the room. That’s the aim of the game at Hint Hunt. Located just around the corner from the easily accessible Euston Station in London, Hint Hunt offers a unique opportunity to have your team practicing individual and team thinking. In this mini escape exercise, teams of between 3 and 5 are locked up into what looks like a normal room at first sight. However, the rooms at Hint Hunt are ‘smartly designed environments’ where captives need to pool together to discover ‘hidden objects, codes, keys, riddles and clues’ to help them achieve their final goal, escaping the room in 60 minutes.
Hint Hunt recommends that your office brings 10-15 people who can play the challenge, in unison, in parallel rooms. This is a perfect team building exercise that acts as a powerful way to unite a group and stimulate creative problem solving skills. Hint Hunt is available for just £17 per person.
2. Wildgoose
Wildgoose have reinvented and intertwined the popular treasure hunt concept with the technology of today. Each team participating in a Wildgoose event receives a tablet pre-loaded with important information and a range of features, catered especially to you.
Questions, tasks, and challenges can only be activated in certain locations across the city. Your tablet will keep you updated on where to go and the location of your competitors in order to constantly build suspense and keep your team moving. There is a huge variety of clues, questions, and trivia with unique photo and video challenges that are sure to get teams working together, out of their comfort zone and applying their own creative touches.
3. Chill Factore
Chill factore offers completely unique team building exercise on the UK’s longest indoor snowboarding slope. It provides well designed activities and challenges that encourage communication and teamwork all based around snow sports.
The most recent addition is the sledge building challenge where teams have to build a wooden sledge from scratch (with no instructions!) before going head to head racing them down the slope. Chill factore is located just outside Manchester and prices change depending on activity and peak times.
4. Airsofting or Paintballing
Paintballing and Airsofting offer various fast paced competitive scenarios that unite your team. Whether you’re storming a building or defending a flag, these games naturally develop leadership, communication and problem solving skills.
These activities don’t require any particular sporting finesse and fits all genders and ages. Paintballing package prices vary across the country but on average will cost between £20 to £50 per head. However, if paintballing is a tad too expensive, Airsofting can always provide an equally fun (and less painful) cheaper alternative.
5. Go Mammoth
Go Mammoth are the corporate sports specialists and the UK’s leading provider of corporate sports events. They can offer just about any sport you can think of. Rounder’s, dodgeball, volleyball, bubble football, cricket, basketball, ultimate Frisbee or my personal favourite the pub Olympics!
Mammoth hold these events singularly or cumulatively as a part of the wider ‘Olympic’ packages. It’s a fantastic healthy, active way to get your team working and communicating together.
Free Team Building Activities
6. Hold a scavenger hunt
This classic team building exercise is sure to encourage creative thinking, confidence and teamwork. Break your office up into small groups of two or more. Make a list of items to find or tasks that take at least two and set the teams off against the clock. Whether it’s taking a group selfie with a stranger or building a house of cards it’s always rewarding and good fun.
You can make it extra difficult by adding wordplay and riddles.
7. Truth and Lies
This is quite a short team building activity. However, truth and lies is a great icebreaker especially if you’re introducing a new team member.
The basic premise is that you form a circle and have each person come up with and state three facts about themselves and one lie in random order, without revealing which is the lie. After someone shares, the others must guess which the lie is.
It’s a great teambuilding activity, helps everyone get to know each other and gives introverts an equal chance to get involved and become more comfortable in the office.
8. The egg drop
This one can be quite messy. You split everyone into groups and give each group a raw egg. Using only a select few office supplies the teams have to build a package against the clock that will keep the egg protected from breaking when dropped. You can drop them in the office or from a window.
Note: If you’re dropping it from a window, ensure that it is not going to fall onto a street or anywhere near people.
Once the packages are completed you can always add some extra confidence boosting by having the teams provide short presentations to the rest of your office about why their package is the best and will safely carry the egg to the ground.
9. Tug of war
I’m sure this playground classic needs very little explaining. All you need is a long strong rope and some teamwork. You can split teams up to make them more equal or bring together those who don’t normally communicate in the office.
Tug of war is not just a game of brute strength, but also relies on well-executed timing only possible through teamwork and leadership.
10. Volunteer at a local non-profit charity
Volunteering not only helps out your local community and your brand image, but is also a great way for the people on your team to bond. Whether it’s cleaning up local parks, building a community garden or collecting funds for charity, all these activities can boost morale, motivation, communication and trust within your team.
Your team will build and grow together in doing something meaningful for others.
