Fun Work Team Building Exercises in 2025: Bring Your Team Together
Team building exercises at work are designed to create and strengthen colleague relationships, enhancing camaraderie, communication and connections. In short, these fun work activities help individuals collaborate better and forge authentic bonds which make work easier, more efficient and enjoyable.
While on the surface work team building tasks might just seem like a bit of light-hearted fun, the outcome of doing these activities regularly is truly important. Businesses with strong workplace relationships and colleague camaraderie are likely to have better rates of employee engagement, retention and performance. Oh, and a great workplace culture too!
This is supported by our own research at Boostworks, which revealed that 70% of employees strive for emotional connection at work. Individuals have a need to connect; they want to build relationships with their peers; they want to have fun. We spend so much time at work, so it’s only natural for people to want to genuinely enjoy working with their colleagues.
In this blog, we’re going to explore the 7 Cs of work team building exercises and give you 30 fun and engaging team building ideas to benefit your business and its employees. Let’s get started, shall we?
Why are work team building exercises important?
Work team building exercises provide a fun, accessible way to boost morale, drive employee engagement and enhance business performance. Team activities bring colleagues together, provide opportunities for employees to hone their collective problem-solving skills, and create a setting where authentic relationships can be built. By doing these exercises regularly and prioritising building social connections, your business and employees will experience a number of benefits:
- Improved communication: Team building breaks down barriers and teaches individuals how best to communicate with colleagues, to build a strong foundation of genuine trust, honesty and respect.
- Boosted morale and job satisfaction: Teams that regularly experience shared success with colleagues and feel part of a supportive unit of people will feel more positive about their role and find work more enjoyable!
- Positive working relationships: Activities that bring colleagues together help forge authentic connections across the business and strengthen existing bonds.
- Strong company culture: Bringing colleagues together to connect helps build a shared sense of purpose and provides opportunities to reinforce your business’ values, mission and goals.
- Colleague recognition and inclusion: Employees that have genuine connections with colleagues will feel seen, heard and respected as individuals.
- Increased employee engagement: Individuals that have great work relationships are more likely to feel connected to their employer and want to stick around long-term.
What are the 7 Cs of team building?
The 7 Cs of team building outline the core elements that make up strong, cohesive teams. Each principle represents an important building block that, when nurtured, will help strengthen and solidify good team practices at work.
- Communication: Strong teams communicate clearly and efficiently, leaving little to no room for misinterpretation, misunderstanding and misalignment. Clear information and ideas flow freely, with opportunities for feedback.
- Collaboration: Team collaboration involves colleagues actively working together efficiently, utilising their individual skills and sharing resources to reach their shared goal.
- Commitment: Teams that work well are committed to their shared goals and dedicated to succeeding together. Each individual takes accountability for their contribution and is willing to put the effort in for the benefit of the team.
- Capability: Individuals have the right skills, knowledge and resources to make a meaningful contribution to the team and its shared goals.
- Confidence: Individuals are confident in their abilities, empowered to take ownership of their area and are willing to challenge individuals/ideas constructively to reach the best outcomes.
- Creativity: Innovative ideas are openly shared and actively encouraged. Colleagues feel safe to explore alternative suggestions and push the boundaries to reach new levels of success.
- Cohesion: Individuals feel supported and respected by their colleagues, with a clear sense of belonging and togetherness. With a unified sense of purpose, colleagues feel connected and aligned.
When you’re planning your team building activities for work, it’s always worth considering these principles to ensure that you’re striving to strengthen or support them.
30 fun and engaging work team building exercises
Ready to boost camaraderie and team spirit in your business? We’ve compiled 30 of our top team building activities for work that’ll help drive communication, cohesion and collaboration amongst colleagues. Beyond the initial boost of doing these fun exercises, get ready to see long-term improvements in employee morale, motivation, performance and engagement. The key is choosing the ones that suit your business and people, and doing them regularly!
1. Escape room
Escape rooms test a team’s ability to communicate, solve problems and come up with creative ideas – all in a high-pressure environment. There’s a time limit to find clues, unpick riddles and, well, get out of the escape room as a team! Ideally, you don’t want tension, but we all know how stressful an escape room can be, so conflict resolution might just be a new skill for colleagues learn too…
2. General knowledge quiz
Get your team into small groups to go head-to-head in a general knowledge quiz, covering a range of familiar topics including showbiz, music, film, TV, science and history. Quizzes are great for encouraging colleagues to communicate, connect and create a bit of healthy competition. And the great thing about general knowledge is that you’re likely to cover a range of subjects, so everyone has a chance to get involved and show off the random facts stored in their brain.
3. Traitors
This popular TV show has made it into this blog for a reason! The game of Traitors is built around the relationships formed between contestants, relying on individuals to form allies based on truth or deception. Colleagues must work together to uncover and banish the traitors. Or, for some, the aim of the game is to outright lie to cover their backs!
4. Lunch and learn
Use your lunch break to get colleagues together to learn about new topics as a team! You could have a different team member lead each session or bring in guest speakers to add an extra level of interest. The idea behind this team building activity is that individuals connect, share knowledge and build confidence in an informal work setting so they can take that into day-to-day work.
5. Two truths and a lie
Why is this well-known game a good team building activity for work? Well, it provides an entertaining way for individuals to learn new things about their colleagues! It relies on people feeling confident enough to ask questions and then working together to consider which statement is the lie.
6. Desert Island Discs
For this team activity, individuals must pick the songs they’d take with them to a deserted island and explain why. You can give people a maximum number of songs, say five, and leave them to discuss! The resulting conversations will see colleagues connecting on a personal level and perhaps debating some of the songs chosen.
7. Team picnic
We love picnics here at Boostworks. When the weather’s good, having an al fresco lunch is a great way for team members to connect and strengthen their relationships. As for the team-building element, you can ask everyone to contribute to the food and even nominate smaller groups to decide the games or activities to boost the day.
8. Office trivia
Whether you work in an office or a different environment, there are always inside-jokes, random facts and funny memories that can form the basis of a brilliant team-building quiz. So, test your colleagues’ knowledge, spark some healthy competition and give team members the opportunity to work together to win!
9. Penny for your thoughts
This team building exercise involves people sharing their responses to a series of prompts to open up conversations, build connections and create a sense of trust between colleagues. Prompts could relate to personal challenges, feelings and opinions – things that give people the opportunity to share their unique perspective with the group. Having a tool to connect like an interactive social wall means individuals can comments their words on a post for all colleagues to see and engage with.
10. Dream meal
A conversation about food is always welcome in the office, right? This team building game requires everyone to share their food heaven – the meal they’d request to eat time and time again, with no limitations. The answers will reveal stories, memories and preferences that could be met by agreement or end up becoming a healthy debate.
11. 3-question mingle
Think of this like speed dating but without the actual dating. People pair up on rotation and are asked three questions from a selection of pre-prepared question queue-cards designed to spark interesting and enlightening conversations. The questions take the awkwardness away and allow people to share little snippets of their characters in a fun setting.
12. Board games and puzzles
Want to do team building without the prep? Grab a selection of games to play as a one big team or multiple small groups. The go-to classics like Monopoly or Cluedo are great options for creating some light-hearted rivalry. Alternatively, puzzles provide a simple but effective way to drive teamwork as individuals band together to fit the pieces together.
13. Memory wall
Whether you do this in person or virtually through a collaborative, online platform, this activity prompts colleagues to share photos, videos and stories from memorable work moments. While a great reflective exercise, this also gives newer team members a chance to connect more deeply with their colleagues and gain new perspectives.
14. Your first idea
Using a series of prompts – be it questions or challenges – invite colleagues to share the first idea that pops into their mind with the group. The spontaneity of this team building game encourages individuals to be creative and communicative. And with the results likely to be a random mix of ideas, colleagues are sure to have some laughs along the way!
15. Who am I?
A classic for a reason, this team building game (and ice breaker) requires individuals to guess the character, celebrity or notable person they’ve been assigned by asking yes/no questions. In person, using sticky notes on people’s foreheads is the best way to play this (in our humble opinion) so people can see and feel real-time reactions.
16. Follow the leader
This fun team activity certainly builds trust and confidence amongst colleagues. It’s a good memory test too! Each person takes it in turn to be the leader and demonstrates a movement or action for the rest of the group to follow, building up to a sequence. The result could be a well-choreographed dance routine. But, let’s face it, the reality will be a wonderful mess of misaligned movements and shared laughter.
17. Sentence to story
This quick, low effort team building activity can be done remotely or in-person. In your group, one person starts your story by saying one sentence. The next person provides a follow-on sentence, and you go round each person in the group with everyone providing a sentence to build the story. You can repeat this multiple times until you all feel satisfied that your story is complete. The result could be a masterpiece or a mess, but the fun, collaboration and creativity is what counts!
18. Show and tell
Invite people to share more about who they are to foster greater openness and transparency among your team with this team building activity. People bring in or show in a call a meaningful item and explain what it is and why it’s important to them. Encouraging a new level of openness between colleagues will deepen connections and help build a foundation of respect.
19. One-word check-in
Simple but effective, this team building exercise does what it says on the tin. Each person takes a moment to share one word to describe how they’re currently feeling. It could encapsulate how their week is going, their mindset in the moment – something to give colleagues an insight as to how they’re doing. It doesn’t have to go beyond one word, but it’s likely that people will naturally want to expand and have more of an emotional check-in.
20. Photo caption contest
This fun team activity involves creativity, communication and, as to be expected, competition! With a selection of random or funny photos in front of them, individuals must work together to come up with the best captions. Once done, each team votes for their favourite for each photo and you can crown the winners! Using a rewards tool like ours, you can make voting easy with employees able to nominate a winner and deliver the award through the app. Cool, right?
21. Salt and pepper
Another team building exercise and ice breaker, this game doesn’t involve seasoning food, despite the name. Instead, each person is given a word that has a natural match (like salt and pepper, cheese and onion – you get the gist) and has to find the person that has their matching word by asking yes/no questions. This quick, fun game of discovery requires everyone to communicate, helping break down barriers and foster connection.
22. Sales pitch
Think of this as your business’ light-hearted version of Dragon’s Den. In teams, individuals need to come up with an inventive product or business that they then need to pitch to the rest of the group. Working together to settle on an idea and then decide how to pitch will test individuals’ creative and communication skills – tools that they can transfer into their normal working life.
23. Scavenger hunt
Turn your office or place of work into a challenge arena, with hidden items to find and fun games to complete as a team. Individuals must work together, using clues, to discover the items and use their problem-solving skills to accomplish the tasks thrown at them. This playful team building game will see colleagues band together to work towards a common goal and feel a sense of shared achievement once they get to the end.
24. Back-to-back drawing
In this team building exercise for the workplace, two people sit back-to-back. One person has a picture that they must describe, while the other attempts to draw the picture based on what they can imagine from their colleague’s descriptions. Communication, naturally, plays a big role in this task, requiring individuals to learn how best to get across and absorb the information. Creativity is also required but, let’s be honest, the artistic flair and accuracy of the picture isn’t that important…
25. Charades
You’ve got to love a bit of Charades… This classic game is a great team building activity as it sees individuals act out the titles of movies, books, TV shows and songs, without speaking, for their colleagues to guess. Guaranteed to bring out some questionable actions and laughter from the group, this popular game will help build authentic connections and show individuals’ true characters.
26. Minefield
This team building challenge relies on trust and communication. One person is blindfolded, while their colleague must guide them through a series of obstacles using only verbal instructions. Get into teams with multiple pairs for this to incite excitement, competition and a bit of healthy pressure. The winning pair are sure to be great at communicating from then on!
27. What would “X” do?
Take a scenario, pick a notable character or person and collectively decide how they would resolve or react. An interesting, thought-provoking team building activity for sure (and maybe not one to use for genuine work meetings), this exercise prompts people to think outside of the box, challenge ideas and come to an agreement.
28. Sports day
Childhood memories resurfacing here? Park them to one side for a sec and think about the fun of doing a sports day at work! Choose a range of light-hearted activities and split colleagues into random teams to create opportunities for different people to connect. Then, let the fun begin! The competition will be practically sizzling, and you can guarantee that colleagues will quickly form tight units to reach the top spot.
We had our very own sports day here at Boostworks and let’s just say, we never thought we’d be doing sack races and three-legged races in adulthood. But did we have fun? 100%.
29. Wink murder
Another childhood classic that is guaranteed to get people giggling, Wink Murder is a simple, fun team building game. Similar to The Traitors with the use of deception, you need to secretly choose your ‘murderers’ who will be responsible for discretely delivering a ‘killing’ wink at colleagues. It’s then a dramatic race for the other players to identify the murderers before it’s too late. The drama!
30. Volunteering
Boost your team while doing something positive for a local cause or charity! Volunteering is a brilliant team building activity for work because it gives employees a shared purpose and common goal outside of the workplace to really test their ability to collaborate well. As well as helping employees connect and work together effectively, the knowledge of knowing that their collective effort is making a positive difference will create a sense of accomplishment and pride.
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