As anyone who has attended a corporate event before can attest, there is sometimes a danger of things becoming too formal for any real fun to be had. Events that ask too much from attendees or don’t inspire participation can go down like a lead balloon, so everyone in attendance is hoping they are given something to work with.

People want to have fun. More often than not, tapping into someone’s competitive edge can be an effective way of getting them to loosen up slightly to create an atmosphere that encourages others to do the same.

That’s why it’s worth trying to find activities that are a little bit outside the norm. You likely wouldn’t be thrilled if the next party had “pin the tail on the donkey” as an hour-long activity, so it’s fair to say a codebreaker game or a quiz called “Around the World” might pique many people’s interests a little bit more.

At a recent company event, a series of activities were mapped out by Dynamic Events, who delivered 819 events to over 56,000 people last year in venues all over Ireland. Starting off with a quiz game that incorporates everything from geographical knowledge to dancing skills, later on saw people have a go at codebreaking and some late-night disco bingo.

Around the world

A pub quiz format is a good way to tap into someone’s competitiveness, but this game is a bit of a step up from that. With every team being given their own iPad, a series of posters are stuck to the walls of the room and into the hall that each showed a different landmark or historic site.

Basically, you scan the posters with the iPad for your team to gain access to that category’s questions and tasks. So, for example if the poster showed the White House, you would select the USA on the iPad’s map, scan the poster with the camera and away you go.

This is where the fun begins. Once you have unlocked it, the questions and tasks could be anything from trivia about that particular country to a video of your team performing a dance routine.

There is no order to the categories, which only makes things even more exciting. While your team is choreographing their Riverdance routine for the Irish category the team beside you could be trying to decide what country invented the croissant (hint: it’s not France).

You get points for getting the right answer, but it’s also made clear that the focus is more on bringing a bit of life to your team’s responses. Videos recorded during the game are played back later on in the day, making for some hilarious watching as you eagerly await the final scores.

Codebreaker

One of the best things about team challenges is that you get a good variety of skillsets. While one person might have a knack for numbers or working out puzzles, someone else might have unrivalled celebrity knowledge or visualisation skills.

A game like codebreaker is not only designed to test all of those skillsets, but to also bring them all together. Rather than there being suited to any one type of person, the only way to win is for everyone to come together.

The rules of the game are set out at the start, as well as the time limit. Every team received a large box with a code on it, and the first task is to open it up with the final goal being the group who get to open up the main safe.

You can only win the game by having worked out the puzzle on that box, as it contained six small briefcases (each with their own puzzles). It is only after working through each of these puzzles that you can finally try to work out the code for a safe in the middle of the room.

The puzzles themselves are as varied as they are challenging, making sure that every team member is called upon to work out what needed to be done. Some are designed to make you count numbers out on your fingers to work out a sequence and others re designed to be worked out with a pen and paper, but all of them were designed to keep you engaged from start to finish.

Disco bingo

There may have been a time when bingo would have been far from acceptable as a team building event. As the name suggests however, disco bingo is slightly different to what you might expect in your local clubhouse every Thursday evening.

Basically, every team is given two sheets of paper with the name and singer of eight different songs printed in two rows. The DJ then played out some classic songs (the kind that are dead certain to fill a dancefloor), and if your card had a match you had to mark it out.

Similarly to vanilla bingo, you call out when you’ve filled in a line. Simply bring it up to the DJ and show them your card, so your team can be awarded points.

As with the first game however, it’s not all about trivial knowledge. The hosts are keeping an eye on which table is getting the most involved, from the people giving it socks on the dancefloor to the ones belting out Celine Dion to their heart’s content.

Those efforts are rewarded for being the life of the party. Bonus points are handed out for people going the extra mile, so it’s only by coming out of your shell do you have a chance of coming out on top.

Dynamic Events has worked with 386 different customers in the last year alone, including household names like Coca-Cola, Dell, Energia, Facebook, PwC, Salesforce, and Kerry Group. Ranging from fully managed in person events to fully virtual or hybrid events, other games include a digital treasure hunt and escape games.

Every client’s wishes are different. From breakthrough online and in-person team building activities for employees to challenge performance, fun filled company celebrations that are about nothing other than capturing the moment, to customised brand launch events that thrill your customers.

Choose the idea that suits you by visiting the website here.

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