9 Incredible Team Building Retreat Ideas That Will Boost Productivity
Whether you’re planning a corporate retreat offsite or on your company’s premises, the activities you fill your day with will make or break your event. To help you and your colleagues get the most value, click here for our team building retreat ideas.
What if a few activities could transform your small business into a major player?
The strength of your business comes from how well your employees work well together. So if you can strengthen that employment team, you can improve your business as a whole.
Not sure where to get started? Don’t worry: we’ve put together nine incredibly team building retreat ideas to make your company more productive than ever before!
1. Scavenger Hunt
It can be tough to come up with brand new games for teams at your corporate retreats. Why not stick to a classic like a scavenger hunt?
The team building is already built into this activity, as your employees must collaboratively figure out clues to reach the next destination on their hunt.
This activity also doubles as a way for the team to explore the location of your corporate retreat. So, they’ll learn about the area, learn about themselves, and enjoy some time in the sun, all at the same time!
2. Custom Game Show
One of the best low-key team building activities is doing a custom game show. For instance, having your employees play a version of Family Feud in which you and management have developed very special questions about the company.
You’ll need to split the employees into teams, which is a great way for people who don’t normally work together to get to know each other. And that knowledge is the key to victory!
For best results, try to throw in fun questions that reference events and people around the office. This lets everyone relive fun memories while creating a new one!
3. Campfire Tales
Everyone who has gone camping knows how fun it is to tell stories to each other around the campfire. And while an actual fire may not be part of your fun work outings, there’s a lot of value in the storytelling!
Create a set of prompts, such as “first day” and “work travel,” and stick them on a board. Employees then take turns picking a prompt and telling a story about it.
While they talk, other employees write down words about their own similar experiences. By the time everyone has gone, you’ll have an entire wall of connected stories!
4. Cooking Challenge
Normally, cooking isn’t part of work life (unless you count the microwave in the break room). However, you can “spice” things up in your team building activities with a corporate cook-off!
Divide your team into smaller teams and assign everyone the challenge of coming up with a special food item. For an added challenge, though, require each team to incorporate some weird and special ingredient.
This fun activity allows employees to work together like never before. And whether the final dish is delicious or disgusting, they’ll have a memory together sweeter than any dessert.
5. Go Kart Racing
You’ve probably noticed a theme with our team building events: many of them focus on recapturing the fun your team members had as children. And that theme continues with our next suggestion: Go-Kart racing!
Find a local place with Go Karts and have your employees compete for things like “first to finish,” “highest speed,” and “scariest turn.” Trust us: it’s a work event like nothing they’ve ever done before!
To make sure the memory lasts, create some custom trophies ahead of time. This gives the winners something to take back to the office when the retreat is over.
6. Memory Wall
Speaking of having something to take back to the office, the next of our team building activities is a memory wall. The first step is asking employees to take about fifteen minutes to look around the room and write down a list of positive memories and shared experience with different team members.
Next, have them create drawings of a few of these memories. Allow them to work with partners if the partner was involved in the memory.
The final step is having them tape their drawings to a wall and briefly discuss why this is such a precious memory. This brings the team together and gives you a wall of memories to take back home, all while saving money on an easy activity!
7. Board Game Tournaments
Not all great team building events are expensive or high tech. In fact, the next idea is cheap and old school: board game tournaments!
The idea is simple: choose board games that encourage a lot of interaction and have your team members compete to see who will come out on top.
No matter who wins, everyone will benefit from getting to know each other with this kind of fun and informal activity.
8. Kickball
Maybe you’ve got a team full of people that like to stay active. In that case, here’s a great team building activity: kickball!
While it’s fun and lighthearted, this activity encourages team members to communicate strategies and goals with each other. It’s simple: the team that works best together will be the team who comes out on top!
This doesn’t have to be limited to the corporate retreat, either. If everyone has fun trying this out, it might be an excellent opportunity to start an adult kickball league once you get back home.
9. Feature Story
They say that our perception determines our reality and that all of us are writing our own story. You can make that literal with the next activity, though: having your employees create a story for a magazine!
Assign different teams the task of developing a cover story about your company. Each team is responsible for every element, from choosing images and headlines to finding quotes and writing up the text.
Provide some digital templates to let them put it all together. After that, you award prizes for categories such as “best magazine,” “funniest headline,” “most creative images,” and so on.
This encourages your employees to learn more about the company and each other at the same time!
Team Building Retreat Ideas: The Bottom Line
Now you’ve got a collection of awesome team building retreat ideas. But do you know how else to take your business to the next level?
At The Phat Startup, we are all about helping small businesses become big deals. To see how we can revolutionize productivity, check out our money and finance tips today!