Are you looking for some fun office games to play with employees in the office? Other than lightening up the atmosphere, playing a game can also help familiarize employees.
If a good relationship is established, then it is guaranteed that collaboration will also be easier. Want to know what the recommendations are? Find 7 types of fun office games right here.
A Gallup survey in America reveals that companies with high employee engagement tend to have productivity, profitability, superior, and customer satisfaction. Other than that, it has also been proven that satisfaction will lead to a low level of absenteeism and employee turnover.
But the question is, how to increase employee engagement?
The answer is team building. It’s the key to a better engagement within the employees. Organizational effectiveness, one of them, is being determined by the ability of its members to synergize.
So, get to know how your employees are and try to create a professional environment that supports strong bonds for collaboration between colleagues and you can do it by regularly holding fun office games to play.
Benefits of Fun Office Games for Employees
- Improve communication
- Encourage teamwork
- Identify team’s strengths and weaknesses
- Increase in creativity
- Build trust between employees
Human Snakes
Human snakes is an indoor game that could be used to build communication and trust. Why? Because in a state of closed eyes, each member must believe and follow the instruction of other members.
Here, cooperation is needed to achieve the goals. Below are the rules of the human snakes game.
Tools: multiple blindfolds, buckets, and random objects
Number of people: unlimited, split into teams of 4 – 6 people
Duration: 30 – 60 minutes (adjustable)
How to play:
Each team stands in line with both hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. All members have to close their eyes, except one person in the back row. The person in the rearmost position is tasked with giving directions by tapping the shoulder of the person in front, left side to turn left, right side to turn right, and holding both shoulders to stop. Then the direction will be channeled sequentially to the person in front of him/her.
The team will be given the task to find objects and put them in a bucket. After successfully placing it, the person at the back will take a turn to put the blindfold on. Meanwhile, the person in the front will take off the blindfold and move into the tail to give direction.
Two Truths and a Lie
This one of the office fun games will encourage each participant to get to know and find interesting facts about their co-workers. You can also create a relaxed atmosphere where participants can open up and show their creativity by composing the stories.
Tools: none
Number of people: 5 – 100 people
Duration: based on the number of participants (adjustable)
How to play:
Each participant will be asked to come up with a creative and making up a unique but convincing statement. One by one, the participants will submit 3 statements, namely 2 true and 1 false about themselves. Then the other participants will be tasked to guess which statement is a lie.
Participants who will guess can ask some questions. Meanwhile, the main participant will answer by giving directions or convincing the lies. This game will be very fun to play if the statements are being made luxuriously.
Guess that Baby
For those of you who want to increase small team intimacy, then this fun office game will be a perfect one. The activity will encourage positive and enjoyable conversations about each participant.
Tools: participant’s baby photo
Number of people: 5 – 9 people
Duration: 30 – 60 minutes
How to play:
All participants were asked to bring a photo of themselves as a baby. Later, the photos will be posted on a board without a name. Their co-workers must guess and identify all the photos and also find their owners. This game actually can be done virtually such as through video.
Broken Telephone
The broken phone is one of the quick fun office games that’s very popular in America. Besides it is fun, this activity will also encourage participants to communicate carefully and effectively.
Tools: none
Number of people: unlimited, split into teams of 5 – 7 people
Duration: customizable
How to play:
Each team plays in turn. Team members will be asked to stand in a queue with a distance of 1 meter each. Starting from the last, participants will be given a sentence. Once it is done, those who have listened to it will start whispering the sentence to the participant in front of him within 7 seconds.
Those who have received the message will convey it in the same way to the person in front of him/her and so on. The last participant must announce the sentence that he/she heard. The team will get points only if the sentence matches the initial message. Remember, mistakes can actually be good humor too.
Werewolves
Playing this game requires creativity and persuasion skills. The Werewolves game is known as a great fun game for small teams. Usually, in no time, participants will be busy analyzing and discussing who’s the wolf in their team. Such a social game of intrigue.
Tools: none
Number of people: 6 – 9 people
Duration: customizable
How to play:
Before the game starts, each participant is assigned a secret role, namely a villager or wolf. Two or three wolves would try to convince the villagers that they were innocent. Meanwhile, the villagers will try to kill the wolves so that they don’t take any casualties.
This activity will be divided into two situations, morning and evening. In the morning, all participants will discuss who’s suspected of being a wolf and make a deal to kill him. Moving on to the evening, the wolves will choose one villager to eat.
The wolves win if the number of villagers is equal to or less than them. On the other side, the villagers win if all the wolves have been killed. You can also play this game virtually using certain applications.
Salt N Pepper
In order to increase bonding and synergy within the team, you can certainly play this game with the employees. Participants will be encouraged to respect the differences and focus more on finding the common ground between one another.
Tools: cards with the names of objects or people in pairs
Number of people: 6 – 20 people
Duration: 1 – 2 hours
How to play:
Prepare a set of pairs of cards which lists the names of things or people. They can be different but must match together. For example: sugar – salt, Mickey – Minnie, Yin – Yang and so on.
Tightly paste the card to the participant’s forehead or back, without them knowing what was written. Then, intrust participants to look for pairs that match their cards. They can ask other participants what is written on their card. However, other participants are only able to answer yes and no to provide some clue.
For example: ‘person’s name?’ ‘yes’, ‘popular’ ‘yes’, ‘Michael Jackson’ ‘no’ and so on. If participants manage to guess the name on their card, then that person needs to find the person with the matching card.
Count to 20
The count to 20 game focuses on active listening practice and team collaboration. Each participant needs to recognize the situation before deciding to speak out. What does it mean? Check out the instructions below.
Tools: none
Number of people: unlimited, split into teams of 4 – 6 people
Duration: 1 – 2 hours
How to play:
Each team plays in a circle. One person in the team needs to complete a count from 1 to 20. However the problem is, no one knows who will name a number. If there is more than 1 member who mentions the same number at the same time, then the count must start from the beginning.
All in all, indoor games for employees will bring a relaxed atmosphere. This will encourage positive energy that will help building a good relationship in the office. A fond relationship will lead the employees to have a strong and smooth collaboration.
Other than that, these fun office games can also be a medium for sharpening an individual’s skills such as creativity, agility, and leadership. You can use the 7 game ideas above to consider what goals you want to achieve in the team. They are simple and fun, aren’t they?