Employee engagement is one of the key competitive differentiators in today’s business landscape
It plays a key role in many aspects of a business including company success, employee retention and more. An engaged employee performs better than his counter parts, benefiting the company at various levels. An employee along with his work requires activities to ease himself from all the workload. Employee Engagement games help employees to feel connected to their team and feel relieved and energized through various fun activities. Team Engagement games can as well be called as Team Building Programs as they constitute a process of building a team of individual employees into a strong team with immense performance and enhanced social relations.
The purpose of employee engagement games is to get the best out of employees, it is essential to work with a fresh mind and feel happy and motivated. Engagement within employees boosts their morale and allows them to perform better.
What’s in the Room
- What’s in the room, game activity involves teams to pick up any random object in the room and prepare a marketing plan to sell it.
- They must come up with a brand name, logo, slogan and detailed strategy to make their product a hit with the masses.
- All this has to be achieved within a set amount of time. Once the time is up, they present their chosen object creatively and try to sell it at a profitable rate to the other teams.
- The team that could sell the product at highest profit with most enticing marketing plan is declared winner.
- Later, there is a discussion held with the entire group on the reasons behind the successful selling spree of winning team and how other teams could have done better.
- The game helps the group to see the same things in new light and come up with crunch-time ideas and problem solving.
Tug-of-War
- Tug of war, also known as Rope pulling or Tug o’ war.
- Organize an office wide tug-of-war tournament for all to participate in.
- This can be department versus department or you can break the office up into teams of your choice.
- Both the teams have to pull the rope on opposite sides against the force of the opposite team.
- The goal is to strengthen the employees unity and team power with a jist of play and fun.
Talking in Circles
- Talking in circles is a very fun and challenging game that requires lot of communication and coordination among the teammates.
- The group is asked to stand in a circle with around a long piece of string tied at the ends to form a circle.
- Next, the team is asked to create shapes with the string – square, triangle, figure 8, rectangle and many other shapes.
- To increase the difficulty level, the members are asked to shut their eyes/be blindfold and repeat the exercise.
- To further increase the complexity of the game level, random team members may be “muted” at different times thereby making communication much more challenging.
- This game activity also tests the level of leadership and trust within a group.
Name that staff member
- Name the staff member requires two or more teams to play the game.
- Add everyone’s name in a bowl or a jar.
- Each team need to pick one name at a time and are required to describe the particular employee.
- The description can be made through the particular persons unique features or something that he/she is wearing that very day.
- The game can be complicated by letting the description of the employee limit to just one word.
- Name the staff member can include different levels as the game proceeds and is a fun way to see how well the people know each other and how well they are aware of each other’s characteristics.
Draw the puzzle
- This game involves team building and helping team members.
- Different groups will be made, such as five people in each group along with a group leader.
- The trainer/ referee will explain the group leaders about the challenge or what is to be done.
- The team leader is given a paper where something will be drawn but the leader cannot show to his team.
- Then the trainer/ referee will provide an A4 size paper to the teams.
- Next, the team leader has to face the wall and explains what is written or drawn in the paper without taking the name of what is drawn.
- The team members have to draw or write everything what has been told, the members could discuss also.
- At last, the trainer will show the paper of team leader and other member for results. This shows how much of the team work and understanding is among the team members.
Whenever a new employee or a team settles down in a new work environment of any organisation. It is essential on the company’s part to ensure that the new employee as well the other employees are engaged. Employee Engagement Games are used as a medium to make sure that all the employees are motivated and contented in the company.
Virtual Teambuilding for Remote and Hybrid Teams
Given the many benefits provided by employee engagement team games, it would be a shame for the growing numbers of remote and hybrid professionals to miss out.
While most of the games discussed above will be tough to pull off in a virtual space, there are a number of great team building games and activities perfectly suited to remote teams.
Virtual tabletop games:
Virtual tabletop simulators can offer a fresh approach to teambuilding for organizations looking to expand their engagement toolkit. Multiple players can engage in virtual versions of collaboration-focused board games to help build stronger team connections.
Digital escape rooms:
Follow an online guide or build your own virtual escape room where players are tasked with solving puzzles to reach a shared goal. These types of games help to build collaborative and critical thinking skills and can be easily pulled off in a virtual environment.
Online trivia games:
Industry or company-themed quizzes take very little time to create and can help to build camaraderie between remote workers. Offer some small prizes or forfeits if you want to stoke competition, or start a leaderboard and run your quiz as a weekly event.
Custom photo contests:
Pick a theme each week and task employees with posting the best on-theme picture to your team messaging platform. Photo contests can be a great and easy way to help employees share a little more of their personalities and add a little fun into the working week.
