When we say ‘easy team building activities’, we think of playing games that require minimum to no materials and spark lots of fun. If you agree with us, then you’ve reached your dream list. We’ve included:
- Easy team building activities for work
- Easy virtual team building activities
- Easy team building activities for students
- Quick and easy team building activities
- Fun easy team building activities
Easy team building activities for work
Team Lunch
This is one of the easiest team building activities for work because it requires zero effort and guarantees awesome results. Picture this: a stress-free, laid-back gathering where we all come together, enjoy a delicious meal and create unbreakable bonds. Plus, it’s a breeze to get things done without any hassle or need for lengthy instructions. And the best part? It’s a win-win for everyone’s taste buds and team spirit because who doesn’t love food? Especially when it’s on the house, courtesy of your generous company!
- Skills: Communication, openness, team spirit
- Duration: 30 minutes or more
- Players: At least 3
- Requirements: A nice selection of foods and beverages
Office Trivia
Not only Trivia is a budget-friendly option, but it also sparks some healthy competition among your people.
Once the trivia questions start rolling, you’ll witness the team spirit ignite, and players will naturally get their game faces on! It’s a fantastic way to encourage employees to mingle with other departments, bringing different folks together for a fun-filled socializing experience.
To get the trivia party started, all you need is a list of questions prepared ahead. You can go for company-specific questions or even spice things up with a themed round. Next, divide your players into teams, and don’t forget to come up with some epic team names. Then, it’s all about showcasing your knowledge and quick thinking to answer the questions correctly. The team with the most correct answers wins the game! Make sure you come up with an enticing prize!
*Note: If you’re looking to level up the excitement, do that. Set up a large projector to display the questions and grab a microphone to give it that authentic ‘game show’ vibe. Trust us, the bigger the event, the more enthusiasm, and cheer you’ll witness from your employees.
- Skills: Competitive spirit, teamwork, communication, sharpness, general knowledge
- Duration: 1-2 hours
- Players: 6-30
- Requirements: Trivia questions
The Communication Game
Another easy team building game that is great during office breaks is ‘The Communication Game’. It’s a great choice mostly because it enhances your understanding of non-verbal cues and reinforces the importance of clear communication within the team.
Start by organizing the participants into a line, standing about an arm’s length apart and facing the same direction. The objective is to test their communication skills without using verbal cues. The game begins with the first player performing a short mime routine consisting of 2 to 3 actions. They will then tap the shoulder of the person in front of them, who will turn to face them and replicate the sequence. This process continues down the line until the last person in the line has seen and repeated the sequence. Success is achieved if the final sequence matches the starting sequence, indicating effective communication and observation skills among the team members. It’s great if the 2 sequences match, but it will also turn into a fun easy team building game if they are totally different!
- Skills: Observation skills, body language skills, communication, competitive spirit
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: 5-20
- Requirements: –
Sinking Boat
This easy group activity tests your communication skills, critical thinking, and ability to reflect on your decision-making process. It’s a great opportunity to learn from your team and gain insights into different perspectives.
You may have heard of the ‘Sinking Boat’ in job interviews, but it can be turned into a team building activity that helps you create a successful team in the workplace.
Here’s how it goes: Start by posing a hypothetical scenario where a boat is sinking, and there are various individuals onboard. Next, ask each of the players to consider who they would save and in what order. You can also throw in some big figures for a touch of creativity, such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and even Donald Trump!
Give themselves a quick 2 minutes to discuss within their teams. Have them share their thoughts, reasons behind their choices, and any challenges they faced during the discussion. To wrap it up, each team will compile a list of 3 things they would’ve done differently to complete the task.
- Skills: Strategic thinking, communication, teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking, decision-making skills
- Duration: 1 hour
- Players: Teams of 3
- Requirements: A list of relevant figures
Easy virtual team building activities
Virtual Coffee Break Games
To make the most of virtual coffee breaks, try to establish consistent times for everyone to join in. We know that in remote collaboration, this can be a challenge due to different time zones, but if you find a way to synchronize your break times, it will make the virtual room come alive with energy and lively discussions.
Here’s the plan: create an online space where employees can gather for their daily coffee breaks. Think of it as your virtual coffee room, where you can chat, share stories, and enjoy some casual conversations. It’s a fantastic way to foster connections, even when you’re physically apart. Next, it’s time to bring that camaraderie online and enhance your company culture, by playing some quick and easy virtual team building games: introduce your pet, give a tour of your workplace, have a chat about your latest read, ‘Show and Tell’ your colleagues more about a meaningful object you have at hand, etc. Check out more ideas in our blog post on ‘Top 12 Virtual Coffee Break Topics’!
So, whether you’re sipping on a hot cup of joe or enjoying your favorite beverage, make it a point to drop by the online coffee room. It’s your daily dose of socializing, bonding, and building stronger connections within our team.
- Skills: Communication, team bonding
- Duration: 5-30 minutes
- Players: At least 4
- Requirements: It depends on the activity you choose, but they involve mostly talking.
Lightning Scavenger Hunt
One of the tips for managing a remote team successfully is to make them feel engaged at work. Fun virtual team building activities are a great way to do that. Hence, we introduce you to the ‘Lightning Scavenger Hunt’, which, unlike the classic scavenger hunts, this variation can be conducted online, with remote teams.
Start by making a list of specific items that your employees need to find in their own homes, and then challenge them to locate those objects as quickly as possible. For example, you could say, ‘Find something that belongs to your partner and ends with the letter F.’ or ‘Find 2 clothing items that are red.’ Once they hear that magical word, ‘Go!’, it’s off to the races! They all scramble around, searching high and low for the items mentioned. The thrill is on to be the first person to return with the correct items and claim the ultimate victory.
Get ready for some rapid-fire fun as we dash around our homes, laughing, and competing to find the items in record time.
*Tip: This is a way to kickstart your ‘Virtual Happy Hour’ event, especially if you’ve spent hours sitting behind our computers.
- Skills: Competitive spirit, strategic thinking, sharpness, observation skills
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: 6-20
- Requirements: A list of items to be found in the players’ homes
Guess The Emoji Board
This works as a great icebreaker for virtual meetings! Each player has to send a private message to the host with a screenshot of their recently used emoji board. The host then displays the emoji board to the players, who must guess the owner based on what they see.
In this easy virtual team building activity, there isn’t a definitive winner, but it serves as a delightful icebreaker to kickstart the session. It’s all about warming people up, getting their creative guessing gears turning, and setting a playful tone for the rest of your time together.
- Skills: Communication, team bonding
- Duration: 10-15 minutes
- Players: 3-15
- Requirements: Prinscreens of the players’ ‘recently used’ emoji boards
Have Your People Learn Something New
Now, more than ever, learning new skills has become accessible right from the cozy comfort of your living room. So, why not surprise and delight your team with an engaging virtual workshop that introduces them to something fresh and exciting? The Internet offers a wide range of unique online experiences, such as cooking classes, cocktail workshops, dance classes, and coffee-making masterclasses.
By selecting a few of these captivating options, you can create a poll in Slack and let your team members cast their votes for their favorite experience. It’s a great way to bring everyone together and embark on a virtual adventure that will leave them feeling inspired and connected.
- Skills: All sorts, depending on the topic they choose
- Duration: It depends on the length of the courses they pick
- Players: All your employees can attend these courses
- Requirements: Free/paid online courses, depending on the company’s budget
20 Questions
This engaging game not only sparks communication but also guarantees loads of fun for all employees involved.
Here’s how it works: choose one employee to be the ‘thinker’ who selects an item in their mind. Then, let the other team members take turns asking up to 20 clever ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ questions to unravel the mystery and guess what object the thinker has in mind.
- Skills: Strategic thinking, competitive spirit, communication
- Duration: 30 minutes – 1 hour
- Players: 5-20
- Requirements: A list of items that are to be guessed by the players
Emoji Quiz
To kick things off, gather your team and create a list of movie, song, or book titles written in emoji form. Here are some suggestions:
- 🦸♂️🕷️ = Spider-Man
- 🥘🐀 = Ratatouille
- 🦁👑 = The Lion King
- 🌴🍹🌺 = Pina Colada
- 👸🏻🍎 = Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
It’s all about decoding the emoji messages!
Divide your team into equal groups and display each emoji title on a screen. Each team will need to write down the correct movie, song, or book title based on the emojis. After everyone has made their guesses, it’s time for the big reveal! Go through the questions once again and unveil the answers.
The team that successfully deciphers the most titles emerges as the ultimate emoji champions.
- Skills: Strategic thinking, communication, teamwork, competitive spirit
- Duration: 30 minutes – 1 hour
- Players: 6-20
- Requirements: A list of movies, songs, or books written in emoji form
Show and Tell
In this activity, participants take turns standing before the group and sharing about an item they have brought along. They have the opportunity to delve into the item’s history, how they came to possess it, and why it holds significance for them. To make it even more engaging, themed sessions can be created, giving speakers a prompt to guide their talk. These could be: ‘you’re biggest achievement this year’ or ‘your daily drive’. To keep things efficient and manageable, consider scheduling this activity as a recurring weekly event with a small number of speakers. Create a schedule and ask the upcoming speakers to bring their cherished items to the virtual office.
It’s an easy yet meaningful team building exercise to foster connections and encourage self-expression among team members.
- Skills: Communication, team bonding, observation skills
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: At least 3
- Requirements: A pre-made list of items to be shown and explained
Easy team building activities for students
Keep The Balloons Up
Once you blow the whistle, the game is on! The goal is to keep those balloons soaring high and prevent them from touching the ground. It’s a race against gravity as teams rely on quick reflexes and coordinated efforts to prolong the flight of their balloons. The winner is the team that manages to go through the entire time limit without a single balloon meeting the ground.
- Skills: Teamwork, sharpness, strategic thinking, competitive skills
- Duration: 10 minutes
- Players: Teams of 3 or more
- Requirements: A bunch of balloons
Paper Chains
Create the longest paper chain using only your dominant hand and no talking once the timer starts. Here’s how it works:
- Divide your students into equal-sized groups and assign a leader.
- Have the leaders step out while you explain the rules in private.
- Leaders rejoin their teams and have 30 seconds to share the rules.
- Teams have 3 minutes to make their chains.
- Measure the chains and declare the team with the longest one as the winner.
- Skills: Leadership, communication, teamwork, competitive spirit
- Duration: 10 minutes
- Players: 20-30
- Requirements: Paper, sticky tape, scissors
To get started, divide your team into squads of 3 or more players. Equip each team with a vibrant set of balloons, making sure there are at least double the number of balloons compared to the team members. For instance, if a team consists of 4 people, they should receive 8 eye-catching red balloons.
What’s My Name?
Picture this: a classroom of students who don’t know each other, just starting their journey together. They might not even know each other’s names yet! That’s where the ‘What’s My Name’ game comes in to break the ice and spark connections.
Here’s how it works: Gather your students and ask them to share their names in a unique way by adding an adjective that starts with the same letter. Here are some examples:
- Funny Felix
- Bold Bonnie
- Quiet Quentin
This easy team building activity for students sparks instant engagement and gets everyone thinking. It’s an ideal choice for new classrooms looking to forge connections and break down barriers.
- Skills: Communication, team bonding, vocabulary skills
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: At least 20-30
- Requirements: –
Birthday Line Up
Gather your players and have them form a line, standing side by side. The mission is to arrange themselves in the order of earliest to latest birthdays (month and day only) before time runs out. However, there’s a twist! No talking allowed! Instead, they must rely on creative hand signals and body movements to convey their birth dates.
Can your students crack the code and synchronize their birthdays without uttering a single word? It’s a challenge that will test their non-verbal communication skills and spark laughter along the way.
- Skills: Strategic thinking, competitive spirit, team bonding
- Duration: 5-10 minutes
- Players: 20-30 players
- Requirements: –
Quick and easy team building activities
Word Association
Have your team gather in a circle, ready for some wordplay fun. Make sure you set a time limit; let’s say 10 minutes. To kick things off, one player starts by giving a one-word prompt. From there, the game takes off as each player responds with a word that strongly relates to the previous one. Keep the game going until time runs out, creating a whirlwind of wordplay excitement!
- Skills: Sharpness, language skills, competitive spirit, communication
- Duration: 10 minutes
- Players: 15-20 players
- Requirements: –
Move Ball
Form a circle with your players and get ready to dive into their movie knowledge. Start by tossing a ball to one player. When a player catches the ball, they have 5 seconds to shout out a movie title that hasn’t been mentioned before. If not, they’re out. The challenge lies in quick thinking and coming up with unique movie choices.
As the game progresses, you’ll discover interesting insights about your teammates based on the movies they mention. The winner is the last one standing!
- Skills: Quick thinking, sharpness, competitive spirit, cinematic knowledge
- Duration: 10-30 minutes
- Players: 20-30 players
- Requirements: –
Who Is It?
This is an easy team building exercise that promotes team bonding and communication. Each player writes down a secret or fun fact about themselves on a piece of paper.
All the secrets are collected and placed in a box or container. One by one, the secrets are drawn from the box and read aloud to the entire team. The challenge begins as team members try to guess which colleague the secret belongs to. With curiosity and teamwork, everyone takes turns sharing their guesses and discussing their reasoning.
- Skills: Communication, critical thinking, team bonding
- Duration: 30 minutes – 1 hour
- Players: 10-20 players
- Requirements: –
Two Truths, One Lie
This is one of the quickest and easiest team building activities! You can’t go wrong with it. Each player takes turns sharing three statements about themselves. Out of the 3 statements, 2 are true, while 1 is a sneaky lie.
To make the game more challenging, encourage players to craft a lie that’s convincing and hard to spot. The other players in the circle carefully listen to these statements and try to guess which one is the cleverly hidden lie.
Once everyone has made their guesses, the game passes on to the next player, keeping the excitement flowing.
- Skills: Communication, critical thinking
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: 5-15 players
- Requirements: –
Fun easy team building games
Alternative Application
To begin, collect a diverse assortment of random office objects, ensuring each player has at least 2 objects. These objects could include a stapler, flipchart, kitchen kettle, and more.
Taking turns, one player is handed an object and tasked with miming an alternative use for it. Meanwhile, the other players eagerly attempt to guess the action being portrayed. For instance, the player holding the flipchart might transform it into a makeshift camera, placing it on their legs, draping a sheet of paper over their head, and mimicking the act of taking a snapshot with a vintage view camera. Once someone successfully guesses the intended use, it’s the next player’s turn to perform. Get ready to witness some clever and unexpected interpretations of everyday office objects!
- Skills: Creative thinking, communication
- Duration: 30 minutes – 1 hour
- Players: 4-20
- Requirements: Office items
Worst Job Ever
In this fun easy teamy building activity, each player will take turns revealing their most amusing or challenging past job. Whether it was a role that made them cringe or a boss that left them scratching their heads, it’s time to spill the beans and bring on the laughter. Not only will this activity bring about a wave of laughter, but it also provides a refreshing perspective on work life. It’s an opportunity for team members to reflect on their own journeys, appreciate their current roles, and gain insight into the diverse backgrounds of their colleagues.
- Skills: Communication, team bonding
- Duration: 10-20 minutes
- Players: 5-10
- Requirements: –
Don’t Smile
This game is a challenge that will put your poker faces to the ultimate test. The objective is to resist the urge to smile while staring directly into the eyes of your teammates.
As the game begins, every participant must focus intently, doing their best to maintain a serious and composed expression. The battle of willpower begins as everyone strives to outlast one another, resisting the contagious power of laughter. And remember, even the slightest hint of a grin could lead to your elimination. Stay strong, stay focused, and don’t let the laughter get the best of you.
- Skills: Competitive spirit, team bonding
- Duration: 10-20 minutes
- Players: 3-20
- Requirements: –
The Ultimate Ninja
Have the players sit in a circle, facing inward, with a meter between each other. This fun easy team building activity begins as everyone shouts “Ultimate ninja!” in perfect unison. Then, every player strikes a powerful and dynamic ninja pose, ready for action.
The game kicks off with the first player facing a crucial decision. They can either attempt to strike the hand of the player next to them with lightning speed, or they can opt for a strategic movement, such as raising their arm above their head. If a player tries to strike another player’s hand, they can dodge the attack. If they manage to do that, they must freeze in the position they landed in until their next turn. If he can’t dodge the opponent’s strike, they are eliminated from the game. Ultimately, the last person standing, the one who outmaneuvers and outwits all others, wins the game and becomes the ‘Ultimate Ninja’.
- Skills: Sharpness, quickness, observation skills, competitive spirit
- Duration: 20-30 minutes
- Players: 5-15
- Requirements: –
