Team building is crucial. 73% of employees surveyed want greater indoor team development. Creativity, communication, and morale improve through teambuilding.
Indoor team-building exercises may be challenging. Finding time, team, and resource-friendly activities may be tough. Helping. This article covers 17 teambuilding activities inside. You'll spend less time studying and more time performing indoor team building.
1. Show and Tell
· Team type: Remote and in-person
· Duration: 5 minutes
· Equipment: None
Show-and-tell is a classic team-building exercise that shouldn't be overlooked. It helps your employees connect and pushes them beyond their comfort zone. Having team members present in front of each other will boost their confidence, improve their public speaking abilities, and help them get to know their colleagues.
How to play:
· Ask two members of your team to bring something in from home with a story behind it.
· Your two team members then present this object to the rest of the team and explain their story.
· Carry out this activity with two different team members every week until everyone has had the chance to present.
· To make this game suitable for virtual teams, follow the same format but the team members present their objects over a video call, as opposed to in person.
2. Office Pen Pal
· Team type: Remote and in-person
· Duration: 5 minutes
· Equipment: None
Isolation is a major source of employee unmotivation and disengagement. Office Pen Pal helps team members connect and feel less alone. Writing by hand improves our mood and reduces stress since it lets us express ourselves and mark our feelings.
How to play:
· Randomly assign everyone in the office a pen pal.
· Handwrite letters to each other regularly (you can set specific 5-minute time slots to do this). The letters may be about anything, from job issues to lunch.
· To make this suitable for virtual teams, you can ask your team members to email the letters to each other.
3. Paper Tower
· Team type: In-person teams
· Duration: 5 minutes
· Equipment: Sheets of paper
The paper tower team building game encourages problem-solving and collaboration. Each team member may exhibit originality, skill, teamwork, and dedication to victory.
How to play:
· Split your team into groups of around 4 players.
· Give each team 20 sheets of paper.
· Teams then have 5 minutes to build the tallest tower they can out of the paper with no tape or glue.
· The team whose tower is the tallest (and stays up) at the end is crowned the winner.
4. Lucky Penny
· Team type: In-person
· Duration: 15 -20 minutes
· Equipment: Pennies (more pennies than participants) and a hat
The lucky penny team building exercise is the ideal 15-minute activity to encourage team members to share something unusual about themselves. It's ideal for freshly formed teams that don't know each other well.
How to play:
· Gather some pennies that were minted in various years and place them into a hat.
· Team members then reach into the hat and grab a penny.
· They must then share something meaningful that happened to them on the year that the coin was minted (if your team is comprised of young members, make sure you pick coins that were minted more recently!).
· Top tip: if your team members seem uncomfortable sharing personal information, you can switch it up so that they share a historical fact about something that happened that year instead.
5. Two Truths and A Lie
· Team type: Remote and in-person
· Duration: 15-minutes
· Equipment: None
Two Truths and a Lie is a great method for your complete team, small or big, to bond. Team building encourages individuals to disclose personal information, which builds trust.
How to play:
· Either in a meeting room or on an online video call, go around the team and ask each player to say two truths and one lie about themselves. For example, “I was born in the U.K. (truth), I have a pet cat (truth) and I studied Law in College (lie)”.
· Team members must then vote on what they think is a lie and what they think is the truth.
6. Keep the Baloons Up
· Team type: In-person
· Duration: 15-minutes
· Equipment: Balloons
Simple but enjoyable workplace game: Keep the Balloons Up. It will introduce friendly competition, lift your team's spirits, get them moving, and help them work closely together.
How to play:
· Find a large indoor meeting room and split your employees into teams
· Blow up three times the number of balloons than there are members in each team, and make sure each team has its own color balloons.
· The team’s job is to make sure none of their colored balloons touch the floor. If any one of the balloons touches the floor, that team is out.
7. Minefield
· Team type: In-person
· Duration: 15-minutes
· Equipment: Blindfolds and various objects
This team-building game fosters trust, communication, and effective listening by blindfolding team members and leading them around a room.
How to play:
· Split your team into two’s and assign one player per pair to wear a blindfold.
· The blindfolded player is led around the room by their teammate who must ensure that they do not step on any objects.
· The leading player is only allowed to use verbal instructions, they cannot touch the blindfolded player at any point.
8. Trivia
· Team type: Both
· Duration: 30 minutes
· Equipment: List of questions
Trivia helps workers interact, exchange information, and learn new things. Trivia is a great DIY indoor team-building exercise for remote or in-person teams.
How to play:
· Split your team into two even groups.
· Create a list of questions you want to ask your team. These can either be general knowledge questions (e.g., “what is the capital of Finland?”), or they can be workplace-specific, for example, “what does B2B stand for?” if working with a sales team.
· Call out questions and the team that answers the question first wins a point. Play until you’ve gone over all your questions.
9. Memory Wall
· Team type: In-person
· Duration: 30-minutes
· Equipment: Paper and pens
A memory wall is a great team-building exercise for generating creativity and reminiscing. This stroll down memory lane will foster teamwork.
How to play:
· Write work-related topics on a large piece of paper. This paper is meant to represent a wall. Some topic ideas: an employee’s first day at work, the funniest office moment, when the team landed a new client, or the implementation of a new system.
· Gather your team around and get them to write their favorite work-related memory on a piece of paper and stick it onto the wall next to the topic it corresponds best with.
· Select participants at random and ask them to share why they wrote that memory and why it resonates with them.
10. Mystery Games
· Team type: Remote and in-person
· Duration: 60+ minutes
· Equipment: Zoom or the game material (comes with your event)
Online mystery games are fast-paced, entertaining, and will have your team working together to solve a murder. This may be played in-person.
How to play:
· Your group will first split up into smaller teams of 8 players. They then work together to review surveillance footage, evidence, and mysterious clues to solve a crime.
· The first team to solve the case wins!
