Team building exercises should be both educational and enjoyable for your staff. By implementing five-minute games into your meetings, your employees will develop their communication and problem solving skills while also growing and learning about one another. We have outlined our four favorite team building games for you to try at your next staff meeting.
Four 5-Minute Team Building Exercises For Your Staff
1. Play a Quiz
Create a quiz with five to 10 team building questions on it about your company history, future company goals, the boss’ background or any other relevant topic. Once your employees have finished the quiz, go through the questions and reveal the correct answers. If an employee gets an answer wrong, they are out. The last one standing wins!
2. Describe and Draw
Pair off your employees into teams of two. One person on each team will start with a blank piece of paper and the other’s paper will have a shape (e.g. circle, square, triangle, etc.) on it. Whoever starts with the paper with a shape, will need to describe the shape to their partner without saying the name of it. Their partner will need to listen and draw their interpretation of whatever they think their teammate is describing. At the end, have a short de-briefing and learn how each employee communicates and receives messages differently.
3. Object Memory
Create a list of at least 30 words. They can be related to a topic of your choice or random. Display the list for your employees to view for one minute while they try to memorize as many words as possible. After one minute, hide the list and ask everyone to write down as many words as they can remember. See who remembered the most. Repeat this game with a new list of 30 words, and let your employees try in teams. They will quickly see that they can remember more words when they collaborate. Debrief and discuss assumptions about working individually vs. collaborating.
4. Purpose Mingle
This is a quick and easy team building game that will improve your employees’ productivity and get them thinking about how they will contribute to an office meeting. Before your next meeting, have each individual walk around and share what they hope to contribute to the meeting with as many of their colleagues as possible. If applicable, you can offer a prize to the employee who shares with the most people, and another for the employee who successfully contributes what they intended.
Developing an efficient team doesn’t have to be tedious or an overwhelming challenge. Most leaders and managers today are beginning to understand that we get more out of our employees when they feel valued, and team building activities are an easy way to get employees recognized. Entertain your employees while reinforcing company values in an engaging and lasting manner.
At Josephine’s Professional Staffing, we offer solutions to staffing, retention and productivity issues. For more recommendations on building your team, read additional articles on our blog today! Or, if you’re looking for a new position, see our current job listings!
