You found our list of team building tasks.
Team building tasks are activities that enable employees to grow friendships, collaborate more effectively, or discover new skills. For example, show and tell, team productivity trackers, and Myers Briggs assessments. The purpose of these actions is to provide concrete tasks that accelerate team bonding.
These tasks can help speed up the team building process. These lists of tasks can make up a team building program.
This article includes:
- examples of team building tasks
- how to create a team building task
- benefits of team building tasks
Let’s get started.
Examples of team building tasks
From exercises that foster communication to those that help your team stay active, here are the best group tasks for team building.
1. Mister Roger Calls
For dispersed teams, Mister Roger Calls connects employees from different departments for 30-minute chats. To facilitate these virtual conversations, use Donut, a Slack app that randomly pairs up team members and helps schedule meetings. Mister Roger Calls is great for team building because it introduces colleagues who may not generally cross paths. Since these chats avoid work-related topics, coworkers can learn about each other in an informal environment.
For similar activities, check out virtual coffee breaks.
2. Secret Gifter
Comparable to Secret Santa, Secret Gifter is a fun team building activity that you can hold any time of the year. To play, team members submit names and receive a subject to purchase a gift for. Then, on the day you hold the event, your team exchanges gifts and employees guess the identity of the secret gifter. Secret Gifter is a terrific way to bolster team morale by giving colleagues an opportunity to show appreciation for each other.
Here is a guide to doing Secret Santa virtually.
3. Virtual Show and Tell
Inspired by show and tell sessions in kindergarten, Virtual Show and Tell is where your team brings an object and explains its significance. You can either ask your coworkers to prepare their object ahead of time or ask them to spontaneously grab something nearby. Virtual Show and Tell is excellent for team building because your team members will reveal more about their personal lives, which helps everyone get to know each other better.
5. Typing Speed Race
To help your team become better typists, try Typing Speed Race, where employees race against each other to type the most quickly and accurately. Using the 1-Minute challenge on TypingTest.com, take the test and report your scores in a designated Slack channel or shared spreadsheet. Employees can compete against each other as individuals or in relays by adding up team totals. Typing Speed Race develops your team’s typing skills and fosters a healthy sense of competition.
6. Meditation Mondays
Have you ever considered instituting Meditation Mondays to kick off your week? To participate, your team tries out a new meditation from apps like Calm or Headspace every Monday morning together. Meditation Mondays are a great practice that helps employees focus and calm anxieties. In addition to the mental health benefits, this collective activity helps bring your team closer and give productivity a boost at the beginning of each week.
Check out more employee wellness activities.
7. Myers-Briggs Session
One way for your team to get acquainted is through a Myer-Briggs Session. To hold this activity, send the Myers-Brigg personality test to your team. Once your team has completed the test, bring everyone together and discuss the results. Since these tests reveal what people are like in their career, family, and love life, Myers-Briggs Session is a fun way to learn what makes employees tick and how everyone can work better together.
Here is a list of free personality tests to use.
8. The Fake Podcast
Borrowing the podcast format, The Fake Podcast is a team building activity, where pairs of coworkers interview each other about their roles in the company. The audio is then edited together to resemble a basic podcast. Not only does The Fake Podcast provide an opportunity for your team to pick up basic podcasting skills, but also provides a low pressure environment to learn about your colleagues and other roles within the organization.
9. Pen Pal Club
While pen pals may seem old school, starting a Pen Pal Club is a fantastic way to build friendships among employees. While you can choose to modernize the Pen Pal Club by corresponding through email, sticking with good old-fashioned snail mail provides a certain charm, especially with an international team. In today’s digital world, actually receiving mail is a novel experience, which makes the bonds formed through these letters even more special.
10. Online Fundraiser
One way to invigorate your team, while also doing some good in the world is to hold an Online Fundraiser. To organize one, partner with a charity or cause that aligns with your company’s mission. That way, the fundraiser feels like an extension of your organization’s work, and can be a strategic move to further your company’s authority in the space. Be sure to set fundraising goals at the beginning, and reward the team if they achieve them.
For ideas on how to crowdsource funds, check out these virtual fundraising ideas.
11. Productivity Tracker
Productivity Tracker helps team members achieve their goals through the power of group accountability. At the beginning of each week, everyone lists a set of simple, yet challenging goals to accomplish by week’s end. Then, determine the winner of the team building activity by calculating which coworker cleared their goals the most number of consecutive weeks. Productivity Tracker motivates your employees, and nurtures a feeling of group loyalty.
Another way to manage productivity is with a Pomodoro app.
12. The Channel Closing Game
Once a month, challenge your team to The Channel Closing Game, where members hurry to close as many unused Slack channels as possible. When the game starts, ask employees to keep track of how many channels they exited. The person who closes the most channels wins. The Channel Closing Game encourages a sense of competition among team members, and helps keep everyone more productive and engaged at work.
Check out more games to play on Slack.
13. Pitch Me Your Business
To foster entrepreneurship among your team, consider holding a few rounds of Pitch Me Your Business. In this game, employees have 15 minutes to persuade an imaginary investor to back their business ventures. The most intriguing business plan wins. Pitch Me Your Business is an awesome team building activity because the team gets to see members’ creative sides, and everyone gets to exercise their entrepreneurial skills.
14. Fancy Dress Day
Fancy Dress Day is a designated day each month when your team shows up to work dressed to the nines on. The employee who receives the most votes for best outfit wins this brilliant team building game. Fancy Dress Day brings your team together because not only will your colleagues express themselves through their outfit choices, but they will also have fun dressing up for the special occasion.
15. Workout Challenge
Based on the “See 10, Do 10” Instagram challenge, Workout Challenge is a superb team building activity that encourages physical fitness. To play, a team member records a video of them doing ten pushups. After sending the video to a designated Slack channel, the team member tags another coworker. This sequence continues until everyone has completed the challenge. If a colleague fails to upload their video, then that person buys the rest of the group coffees. This game keeps your team active by emboldening everyone to adopt healthy habits.
Here is a list with more team building workouts to try.
How to create a team building task
If you do not see a team building activity that suits your company, then you should not be afraid to create your own. To help make this proposal less intimidating, here are the steps you need to invent the next greatest team building task.
Step #1: Pinpoint the skill(s) to develop
While having fun is important to any team building event, the best activities are developed with specific skill building goals in mind. Not only does this provide focus to your activity, but it also ensures that employees do not see the exercise as a waste of time.
Step #2: Calculate your budget
Although team building is essential for any team to run smoothly, not every organization will devote vast resources to it. Thus, before you start dreaming up your team building event, confirm with your organization how much budget you have, which determines the scale and how much you can devote to covering costs for necessary materials.
Step #3: Draw up your activity
Once you know your goals and budget, you can begin to think about what kinds of games, challenges, or exercises might address your team’s needs. While it may seem difficult to plan an activity with these limitations, you will find that the limitations actually help narrow down your focus and become more creative.
Step #4: Figure out the required materials
While some team building tasks do not require any preparation from participants, you should take a look at the activity and note what materials your team needs. Then, depending on your budget and how much time you have, buy and send out the materials prior to the activity. Or, send out a supply list, have your coworkers purchase the materials themselves and reimburse them later.
Step #5: Test out the activity
Before you hold the team building event, consider testing out the activity with a small group. These test runs may help you spot unnoticed holes in your preparations, and lets you familiarize yourself with any technology you will use, which will reduce the probability of technical difficulties arising during the actual event.
Step #6: Refine the activity as needed
If your experiment goes well, then everything is great and you are ready to go! However, if you ran into any difficulties, then refine the activity to better address these issues. For instance, you may realize that your team may need more time or that employees are missing a key piece of equipment or knowledge necessary to complete the task. Now that you know about these problems, you can plan around them so the main team building event goes more smoothly.
Benefits of team building tasks
Now that you know how to plan your own team building tasks, you may be curious what benefits your team will experience by participating in these activities. Here are five benefits that your team will observe.
Learn more about the benefits of team building.
Benefit #1: Cultivate team bonds
When employees participate in collective team building activities, they create shared memories that help form strong team bonds. Not to mention, since these events often involve the whole company, they bring together employees from different departments for a rare opportunity to interact.
Here is a list of ways to do team bonding.
Benefit #2: Draw out hidden talents
Because team building activities do not comprise common work tasks, employees may inadvertently reveal hidden talents while participating. When this happens, managers should take note! These hidden talents may be a fantastic indicator of what tasks employees are naturally suited for. You will raise engagement levels at work if you can work these natural inclinations into employees’ everyday work tasks.
Benefit #3: Fix team weaknesses
Since team building tasks are designed to develop important skills at the workplace, when your organization participates, your coworkers will work on previously diagnosed weaknesses through these activities. With the added element of fun thrown in, these team building tasks are generally more effective at strengthening these skills without feeling like a chore.
Benefit #4: Raise team morale
When teams feel like they are being worked continuously day in and day out, it is easy for people to experience burnout. Thus, if the company schedules periodic team building tasks, the break in routine will raise team morale and spur productivity. Also, when your employees participate in these events together, your team will witness how well everyone works together, which will also help build a sense of group loyalty and pride.
Here are more ways to raise team morale.
Benefit #5: Encourage new skill formation
Team building tasks also expose your team members to new experiences. Employees may find new interests and feel encouraged to develop new skills. For example, if your company decides to start a fake podcast, then it is possible that a colleague who had never considered running a podcast may learn that they actually enjoy podcasting. In which case, your coworker has picked up a new interest that they can finetune and explore for work.
Conclusion
Team building is an important ongoing process that requires continuous practice. Not only do these activities bring your team closer together, but they also teach valuable skills that help your team run more efficiently and effectively and help heighten productivity and engagement.
Next, check out these lists of team building questions and team bonding questions.
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