’Tis the season to grow closer with your coworkers! When it comes to holiday team-building activities, it’s important to remember the goal: to bring everyone closer together and increase the cohesion of your team.
Check out this guide to holiday team-building activities and learn why it’s so crucial for coworkers to bond outside of the office.
The Importance of Team-Building During the Holiday Season
Success in relationships translates to work success. That’s why holiday team-building activities are so important — they allow your employees to create a sense of cooperation while remaining fun and active outside of work.
Team holiday activities foster a sense of connection unrelated to work tasks or productivity. That can set the stage for a more focused, driven team when it’s time to return to the office.
In short: Christmas team-building activities can transform into a better work team with more clarity and productivity.
Innovation and Creativity
Holiday team games use your employees’ creativity skills without channeling them into mundane work tasks. That can pay off immensely in the long run. Creativity is vital to a successful workforce.
Various holiday team events and games encourage workers to innovate, develop creative solutions and strategies, and connect with one another to share ideas. What more could you ask for when you’re seeking unique company culture?
Enhanced Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is essential, whether a company realizes it or not. When your employees are happy where they are, they are more motivated to push themselves and increase productivity.
December team-building activities can help boost morale and job satisfaction without making a laundry list of tedious changes in their workspaces. Fun off the clock makes work more enjoyable for everyone.
Refined Problem-Solving Skills
Problem-solving is one of the most-used skills in any workplace. When issues arise, your employees should know how to put out fires — and deal with the fall-out.
Holiday team games for work can enhance your team’s sense of problem-solving and cooperation. Most of the time, solving a complicated problem requires many brilliant minds working together. Through team-building exercises around the holidays, your team can get great practice doing this.
So what does that mean for your workplace culture? It means that people can work together, solve problems effectively, and spend less time on logistics in the long run.
Effective Communication
Much like creativity and problem-solving, communication skills must be used to remain stable and fit.
Your employees rely on interpersonal communication to get things done and make things run smoothly. What better way to foster a positive sense of connection and communication than through holiday team-builders?
Most holiday group activities require effective communication for a team to win. That means your employees will be driven to talk to one another, use active listening skills, and process new perspectives they might not have thought of before.
14 Fun Holiday Team-Building Activities
Now that you know the importance of fostering a positive workplace through holiday team-builders, where do you start? It can be overwhelming to come up with fun, inclusive ideas during team-building sessions.
Remember these ideas as you navigate the holiday team-building process for a more successful work team.
1. Paranoia Quest Escape Room
Escape rooms are the cornerstones of team-building activities. They jam-pack all the best workplace skills and exercises into one fun day or night: problem-solving, communication, cooperation, and creativity.
Paranoia Quest’s escape rooms offer mystery, ambiance, and thought-provoking puzzles for everyone to solve together. Escape rooms are arranged based on difficulty level so that you can choose the best fit for your team.
In our escape room settings, team members work together to get out of a creepy, mysterious, or downright confusing room. Once they’ve figured out all the clues and put them together, they can exit and relish in their victory.
Paranoia Quest is the perfect holiday team-building destination for your workforce this year.
2. Holiday Scavenger Hunt
Consider an outdoor holiday scavenger hunt if you’re in a big city or near beautiful nature scenery. Your employees can pair up and see gorgeous sites while taking photos of the holiday memorabilia they encounter.
If you don’t have access to outdoor spaces for this, an indoor holiday scavenger hunt can work just as well. You could turn them loose in a department store or someplace similar. They can even get ahead on their holiday shopping while they’re there!
Make sure there are plenty of incentives for teams to be the first to find specific items. You won’t regret it.
3. Christmas Cookie Decorating Tournament
Everyone loves cookies, right? Why not implement a holiday team-building Christmas cookie decorating competition?
Tournaments foster a healthy sense of competition while remaining fun for employees (and their taste buds). It’s a great holiday team-builder for more creative, artsy teams that need inspiration in December.
Decorating supplies are relatively inexpensive and allow everyone to use their creativity as they see fit. You can develop whatever judgment criteria you want — just ensure it’s fair, fun, and realistic.
4. Office Decorating Contest
Consider an office decoration contest if you cannot secure a proper space outside of the office for your team-building Christmas activities. Employees can use their free time to create creative, aesthetically-pleasing holiday decorations for their workspaces.
Office decorating contests are fun and encourage a sense of community and spirited competition in the workplace. When decorating an office with silly, pretty, or otherwise creative holiday decorations, keep things lighthearted and enjoyable — too much competition might not suit your team.
Ensure that things remain fair by establishing a balanced voting system or neutral party as a judge. Remember, decorations can boost morale, too!
5. Holiday Volunteering Committees
Volunteering around the holidays is the perfect opportunity for your employees to give back to the community. Those who volunteer together work well together.
Numerous organizations, both local and national, will need your help around Christmas and other holidays. Organize a holiday volunteer committee in the office and encourage team participation.
There’s no better way to celebrate your holiday spirit than by improving the season for the less fortunate.
6. Holiday Hiking Trip
Do you have an office full of active, fit folks? Take a holiday hike with them!
Hiking is not a traditional team-building activity, but it works nonetheless. Employees get to spend time together in nature, taking a break from the office setting. Still, they’re likely to discuss work and pleasure, which boosts morale and gets creative juices flowing.
Chances are your employees have eaten quite a few holiday treats already. You can promote the health and wellness of your team members by encouraging them to burn off the extra holiday calories on the hike. After all, we all know the feeling of being stuffed after holiday meals.
Why not share the experience with your team in nature, where some of the best ideas are born?
7. Group Holiday Cooking Class
For diverse teams, a group holiday cooking class could be just the adventure you all need. Cooking and mealtimes have been a form of social bonding for humans for thousands of years. Your team can learn new, innovative holiday dishes while sharing in one another’s cultures.
You can arrange for a private chef or local culinary instructor to guide your employees through the process. If you need a healthy dose of competition, make it a challenge. Have your employees devise the best dishes for you or others to judge.
By the end of the night, everyone will be full and satisfied, and they’ll have shared in a wonderful team-building culinary experience.
8. Winter Trivia Night
Nothing gets people more fired up and excited than trivia. Test your employees’ knowledge about various topics with a winter-themed trivia night!
It works best if there are prizes and other incentives to win. You can split the team into groups or allow them to choose partners for the trivia round. Then, they can answer thought-provoking and quirky questions about the holidays, winter, and your company culture.
By sprinkling some work-related topics with the rest of the winter fun, you can foster a sense of community and joy related to work. That boosts morale and employee connection without taking away from the casual fun.
9. Snowball Olympics
It’s time for a snowball fight! Let your employees let loose and relieve some office frustrations with a friendly snowball competition.
Snowball Olympics can take many forms. The most important thing to remember is that it’s a team-building exercise, so encourage partners or team members to work together to win.
Snowball fights should focus on playful intentions and boost healthy competitiveness and communication. Your office culture will surely benefit from hosting an annual Snowball Olympics tournament. Best of all, everyone will get to have some fun in the snow. What better way to decompress during this busy season?
10. Gingerbread House Decoration Contest
What better way to get into the holiday spirit than decorating gingerbread houses? Whether or not anyone eats them afterward, this is a great way to foster community and creativity with your employees.
You can make the contest buffet-style by setting out all the decorating materials for employees to choose from. Whoever comes up with the best, most creative, or most festive gingerbread house wins!
11. Secret Santa Challenge
Add some spice to your office Secret Santa exchange by making it mysterious. Have your employees try to guess who sent what gift based on handwriting, gift style, etc. That adds some fun competition and intrigue to your typical holiday festivities.
To split this activity into several Christmas team-building activities, you can assign everyone a gift category. It will make figuring out who sent what more challenging (and fun).
At the end of the night, everyone will be able to head home with delightful gifts and a day full of memories.
12. Summer in the Winter
Are you and your team desperately longing for tropical vacation time? Make your team-building activities themed around summer — even in the wintertime!
You can decorate the office with floaties, tropical leis, and other remnants of summertime fun. Have everyone dress in summertime attire, like Hawaiian shirts and grass skirts. It’s a great way to alleviate wintertime blues in the office without sacrificing company culture.
You can even pair this with a summertime team-building activity the following year. That way, everyone will remember the fun they had in the office during the colder months. That creates cohesion and fond memories for employees to look back on.
13. Santa’s Workshop Engineering Challenge
There’s no better way to encourage communication and cooperation than through an engineering workshop. To make it fun and festive, theme it around Santa’s Workshop! You can decorate with Christmas and other holiday memorabilia, and if your team has construction talents, you can even build a semi-functional structure.
A Santa’s Workshop engineering challenge allows everyone to practice their skills in a low-pressure environment. That could very well translate to more success on the clock.
14. Holiday Lights Fun Fest
If you want your team-building exercises to be laid back and festive, consider a holiday lights fun festival! You could incorporate a scavenger hunt or a decorating contest if you have the space and resources. However, sometimes looking at pretty holiday lights together is lovely.
The key is to keep this one lighthearted and low-pressure so everyone can enjoy the activities equally.
Schedule Paranoia Quest Escape Rooms for Holiday Team-Building Opportunities
Team-building activities are crucial for enhancing productivity and fostering positive company culture. It improves teamwork, problem-solving skills, and employee morale by promoting collaboration, communication, and trust. It can help increase productivity as employees work more efficiently and cohesively towards common goals.
Paranoia Quest is the perfect place to encourage cooperation, communication, and team-building among your employees. We have options for every team and culture in Buford, GA, and Atlanta, GA.
Our escape room options include mysteries, puzzles, and downright confusing solutions to complex problems. What more could you need in a team-building activity?
Contact us to get started with your holiday team-building. Schedule one of our exciting and puzzling escape rooms today to prepare your team for the holiday season!
