12 Team Building Activities Your Team Will Love

Success doesn’t happen in silos. The most effective teams aren’t just collections of high performers—they’re deeply connected, highly engaged, and built on trust.

Cohesive communication and real collaboration lead to serious gains. Forbes reports that highly engaged teams are up to 21% more profitable. Employees who work in cultures rooted in honest feedback and mutual respect are 80% more likely to report emotional wellbeing. And according to Harvard Business Review, these ‘happy’ employees are 31% more productive and can drive up to 37% more in sales.

So if your goal is to boost output, increase loyalty, and spark innovation, treating your employees like lone wolves won’t cut it.

Want to create teams that truly click? Discover how to turn everyday collaboration into a competitive advantage with team building that works.

What Is Team Building?

Team building is the process of strengthening relationships, trust, and collaboration within a group of employees. It’s about helping a team work better together—by deepening communication, improving dynamics, and building mutual respect.

It’s not just about games and icebreakers (though those help!). Team building includes any structured effort to improve how a team functions—so they can perform, adapt, and thrive together.

When done well, team building strengthens employee experience, fosters psychological safety, and improves team performance. According to Wellhub'sState of Work-Life Wellness 2025, only 66% of employees believe their HR department genuinely cares about their wellbeing. Team building is one way to show employees they matter, and that they’re not just there to deliver KPIs.

Pro Tip: Make It Intentional. Not every activity builds real connection. The best team building meets your team where they are based on their goals, dynamics, and communication styles.

Why Is Team Building Important?

Team building is important because it helps your people thrive together, and that has ripple effects across your entire organization. 

Builds Trust, Collaboration, and Engagement

When people trust each other, they communicate better. When they communicate better, they solve problems faster. And when they solve problems faster—bam—productivity rises. Team building creates space for employees to build these strong relationships, especially across departments or remote settings. Teams with strong bonds are more likely to:

• Share knowledge freely
• Give and receive feedback effectively
• Support each other during high-stress periods

This kind of interpersonal connection helps reduce friction and unlocks smoother workflows across the board.

It Reduces Stress and Burnout

Strong peer connections make it harder to walk away from a workplace. In fact, Gallup research shows that employees with a best friend at work are less likely to be looking for a new job.

This is especially important when nearly 83% of employees say they would consider leaving a company that doesn’t focus on wellbeing, and91% say their work relationships are impacted by their level of work stress. Team building helps you cultivate belonging that drives retention.

Drives Stronger Performance 

When teams are aligned, everyone benefits. Team building creates clarity around shared goals, roles, and accountability. It gives people a chance to understand how their individual strengths contribute to collective wins. Ninety-five percent of workers say emotional wellness impacts their productivity, andemployee relationships are a huge piece of that puzzle.

12 Team-Building Activities

Ok. You know what team building means and you know why it’s important, so let’s get to the fun stuff. Here are 12 different team-building activities designed to get even the most introverted team members eagerly participating:

Indoor Activities

If you’ve got a local team and you’d rather not risk a sunburn (or frostbite, depending on the season and climate), then meeting in the office may be just the thing. Here are several activities you and your team can get into while indoors:

1. Shipwreck. Ready to exercise your imagination while collaborating to creatively solve problems? Then consider giving “Shipwreck” a try. Separate into teams and imagine that each group has been shipwrecked on a desert island. Have the groups each identify 10 items from around the office that they would choose to take with them, ranking each in order of importance to survival. Teams will need to discuss their choices and come to a group consensus before making a final decision.
    
2. Two Truths and a Lie. “Two Truths and a Lie” is a low-key team builder that can be dropped into the middle of meetings or used as an icebreaker to enhance employee lunch-time get-togethers. In this game, every participant shares (either verbally or by writing them down) three ‘facts’ about themselves — two of these will be true facts and one will be a complete lie. The other team members then discuss and vote on which of the three facts is untrue. This not only gives less-vocal members a chance to share what makes them unique, it also improves interpersonal awareness in the company.
    
3. Game Tournament. Sometimes getting to know people is all about getting to know how to take them down in friendly competition. Set up a ping pong table, break out the board games, fire up a Nintendo Switch or even just see who’s the best rock-paper-scissors player on the payroll. A game tournament gives team members a chance to focus on something that feels important and high stakes, but without the stress of work. As an added bonus, team-based games (possible between departments) give players a chance to socialize and learn how to rely on one another while facing challenges.
    
4. Office Pinewood Derby. Why should Cub Scouts have all the fun? A pinewood derby (a race where participants build their own miniature cars from wood blocks) can be an amazing opportunity to promote creative problem-solving and collaboration. Divide the employees into small teams and give each group a pinewood derby kit along with some basic tools. They will have two hours to design the fastest car possible. Once those two hours are up, race the cars down a parallel track made from two 20-foot plastic rain gutters. Incentivize your racers with an award for the final bracket winners.

Outdoor Activities

Why cage yourself together like a bunch of prisoners when the whole wide-open world awaits? For those times when you and your team need some sunshine and fresh air, these outdoor team-building activities offer a fun and healthy way to strengthen professional relationships.

1. Wellness Class. Going outside can do wonders for a person's mental well-being. Take advantage of this phenomenon by offering an outdoor wellness class as part of your team-building strategy. Yoga, Zumba, guided meditation — the possibilities are endless and so are the potential benefits. And if you want to encourage improved health and wellness outside of team-building activities, consider initiating an employee wellness program.
    
2. Scavenger Hunt. There are few things more invigorating than a frantic scavenger hunt. Unleash your employees on an unsuspecting world and see which team can be the first to find and photograph all of the items on their scavenger list. Groups will need to delegate and coordinate effectively to stand a chance of finishing first.
    
3. Service. Many employees would like to give more back to the community, but don’t have the time. Help them make time by setting aside a workday for a local service project — a charity walk, tree planting day, park cleanup event or anything else that will improve your community. Performing service allows teams to make a positive difference. And as if that weren’t enough, it also creates strong team bonds as they pool their efforts towards a selfless cause. They say that we learn to value those things we sacrifice for, but we also learn to trust those we sacrifice alongside.
    
4. Egg Drop. Divide your employees into small teams and give each a single egg and some basic construction materials (such as newspaper, tape, straws, toothpicks, toilet paper rolls, paper cups, rubber bands, paperclips, etc.). Each team will have 30 minutes to build a container that will protect the egg from breaking when dropped from a specific height. If more than one egg survives the initial drop, continue to increase the height until you have a winner (or a tie with two broken eggs). Teams will learn how to creatively approach difficult problems and how to work collaboratively.

Virtual Team Building Ideas for Remote Teams

Is your team spread across the country, working out of the home or telecommuting from parts unknown? That’s no reason to leave them out! Remote activities take a little bit more infrastructure (such as reliable internet connections), but can be just as effective as in-person team building: 

1. Online Games. We’re currently living in a golden age of engaging, easy-to-play multiplayer online games. Browse co-op games on online game stores or find fun multiplayer mobile games that everyone can participate in. From sports, to battle royals, to puzzles and more, there’s no limit to the kinds of online games your team can try their hands at. And, if your employees are interested in making things a little more interesting, a bracket-style tournament can be an exciting diversion.
    
2. Whose Office Is It, Anyway?. Connect your long-distance employees by allowing them to catch a glimpse of each other's workspaces. In this activity, every team member takes a picture of their home office and shares it anonymously with the rest of the group. Others then attempt to guess which home workspace belongs to whom. This game is a fun ice breaker and a chance to see a more personal side of remote employees. And if members aren’t keen to share their home offices, you can adapt the game to focus on desks, chairs, coffee mugs, etc.
    
3. Virtual Scavenger Hunt. A scavenger hunt may not be too difficult when you’ve got the entire world to search, but what happens when the hunt is limited to the area in front of your webcam? In a virtual scavenger hunt, you give your remote team members a list of items to find and bring into camera range. A moderator keeps track of which items have been found by which teams, declaring a winner when one team has located all of the items on the list. Individual teams will need to collaborate together to determine who will be in charge of locating what items.
    
4. Trivia. Maybe the best part about knowing something is having the opportunity to show it off. Trivia events are fun, low-effort games that provide remote employees with a chance to flex their esoteric knowledge in front of their coworkers. Online quiz tools (like Quizzez or Kahoot!) make it easy to create and share game show-style trivia contests that can be accessed and played remotely in real-time. For added relevance, consider making the trivia company-themed, with questions about leaders, clients, company history and more.

Great Team Building Is the Foundation of Culture

Your business is only as strong as your employees and your employees are only as strong as the bonds they share. Effective team building activities at work helps you promote the kinds of positive interactions that cement strong relationships built on trust. And when that happens, improved productivity, profitability and employee retention are sure to follow. 

But team-building events are only the beginning. Are you ready to take your company culture further? Talk to a Wellbeing Specialist today and give your most valuable assets the support they need to remain healthy, happy and engaged in improving themselves as they improve your business.

References

• 12 Reasons Team Building Is Important for Your Company. (September 13, 2021). Team Bonding. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://www.teambonding.com/6-reasons-for-team-building/.
• Beheshti, N. (2019, September 27). 10 timely statistics about the connection between employee engagement and wellness. Forbes. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/16/10-timely-statistics-about-the-connection-between-employee-engagement-and-wellness/?sh=3f88584222a0
• Bonnie, Emily. (April 22, 2022). Ultimate Guide to Team Building Activities That Don't Suck. Wrike. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://www.wrike.com/blog/ultimate-guide-team-building-activities/.
• Cohen, Esther. (June 11, 2019). 35 Team Building Activities Your Team Will Actually Love. Workamajig. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://www.workamajig.com/blog/team-building-activities.
• Culture over Cash? Glassdoor Multi-Country Survey Finds More than Half of Employee Prioritize Workplace Culture over Salary. (July 11, 2019). Glassdoor. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://about-content.glassdoor.com/en-us/workplace-culture-over-salary/.
• New Research: Openness Predicts a Team's Strength. (2022). Atlassian. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://www.atlassian.com/practices/open/research.
• The Happiness Dividend. (June 23, 2011). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved August 31, 2022 from https://hbr.org/2011/06/the-happiness-dividend#:~:text=A%20decade%20of%20research%20proves,and%20quality%20of%20life%20improvements.
• Wellhub. (2023, October 18). The State of Work-Life Wellness 2024. https://wellhub.com/en-us/resources/research/work-life-wellness-report-2024/
• Wellhub (2024, October 16). The State of Work-Life Wellness 2025. https://wellhub.com/en-us/resources/research/work-life-wellness-report-2025/