It isn't easy to find workers who work well with a team these days. This is why business owners need to build team spirit in their workers. However, this is incredibly difficult to do in the midst of all the work and operations. Finding the time to have your team indulge in team-building exercises is tough, which is why you can utilize the holiday season and have workers get involved in enjoyable team-building exercises.
Below are 15 team-building activities that carry the spirit of the festive Christmas and are also easy to set up.
15 Christmas Team Building Activities
1. Recipe Reveal
Since a workplace consists of workers who share different backgrounds and identities, you can expect every other person to celebrate the holiday season differently. Thus, easy ways to have workers encourage inclusivity and accept differences would be to discuss recipes for holiday meals. Every cultural upbringing consists of different foods and dishes. Thus, each household in your workplace will have a secret family recipe deeply rooted in the culture.
2. Common Denominator Holiday Habits
Like the recipe activity, this is another activity that allows employees to break the barriers of cultural differences. In this activity, you have all the different workers discuss their traditions and set them into groups according to the common practices. Then, you can have them discuss them and end the session by asking about their conversations.
3. Holiday Decorating Contest
Competition can be healthy, and this activity embodies the elements of competition. The holidays call for decorations, and employees love to see their workspaces decorated. For this activity, you assign teams and have them decorate a different portion of the workspace in a given amount of time. After the time is over, you judge each team’s decorative efforts and pick the winners. You can also set up a judging committee to ensure an unbiased result.
4. Volunteering
Few things capture the holiday spirit than giving back to the less fortunate in the community. Utilizing the holiday downtime to have your employees work for the community will build their teamwork attributes and increase their communication skills and empathy. You can simply ask the employees to donate whatever they do not need and set a drive for food, clothing, and other items.
5. Holiday Themed Sports
Sports that require workers to attain teamwork, skill, communication, and determination are excellent, not only for team-building skills but also for health. Holiday-themed sports can bring out the holiday spirits amongst the employees and also encourage them to indulge in healthy exercise. Exercise is proven to be incredible for team building, mental health, and physical health.
6. Take a Hike
The temperature drops significantly during the holiday season, and contrary to popular belief, this is not the time to cozy up inside. It is best to get your workers to lace up and head out for a hike. Long hikes can be gruesome and challenging. However, sending your team to go on long hikes will allow them time to get to know each other. Not only that, but it will also expose them to each other’s vulnerabilities and allow them a chance to motivate each other.
7. Fitness Challenge
A fitness challenge is something very easy to set up and perform. It pushes each individual to strive harder and push themselves to get better. Not to mention, you can also perform this activity virtually. All you have to do is send a fitness maneuver or exercise to the employee and have them do better. This can be in the form of a challenge or even a record that they must attempt to beat.
8. Annual Awards
The holiday season is a time of spreading happiness and joy amongst your employees. Moreover, for workers to work together constructively, they must recognize and appreciate each other for all the hard work they do. There is no better way of doing this than by hosting an award ceremony for your team. You can recognize each other for what they bring to the table.
9. Secret Santa
Secret Santa is one of the most popular holiday activities. It involves assigning each member a name, and they have to come up with a present for that individual without revealing the name. This activity gives birth to new relationships amongst workers. It is also an easy activity to set up regardless of the size of the group.
10. Totem Virtual Team Building
Totem Virtual Team Building will encourage team members to connect and tell each other about what they appreciate about one another.
11. Attention Activity
This is a team bonding activity that is very easy and enjoyable. It is also something that you can do virtually. To play this, you must assign two teams and have them face each other. As they are looking at one another, they are supposed to study what each other is wearing. Then, one team turns around, while the other team switches certain items such as shoes or belts. After doing this, the other team has to guess what is missing.
12. Three Truths and a Lie
This is an activity that can work incredibly well if you want your team to learn more about each other and get familiar. To perform this activity, you must introduce yourself by sharing three truths about yourself along with a lie. This gets interesting as everyone tries to guess what the lie is.
13. Holiday Business Plan Pitch Tournament
This is a very straightforward competition for offices and requires you to set workers up in groups and teams. Once you do this, you must have them come up with a sales pitch or a business idea regarding a certain Christmas product or service. This product, service, or plan can be random or related to your business.
14. If you knew this about me
This is another team bonding activity and it allows everyone to get a good understanding of each other. The instructions are also simple. This activity is similar to a monologue, and thus, it involves members sharing their stories extensively. You can give each other a chance to talk for a complete 5 minutes. If you choose not to talk for a full five minutes, then you can sit down in silence.
Since it is a monologue, a person is not allowed to ask any questions or leave any comments. When performing this activity, it is important to think of what you want to share. It is not necessary to share your resume, nor do you want to share something too personal. You will benefit from sharing something that people do not know about you and you are comfortable expressing.
15. Christmas Cookie Tasting Competition
Christmas time is a calling for cookies, and exchanging sweets is a way you can spread happiness amongst your workers. Having a cookie tasting competition is another team-building exercise, and you can also do it remotely by having teams send cookies to each other’s addresses.
To Conclude
Most of the team-building exercises mentioned above are incredibly effective, and you can carry them out even if your team is working remotely. Thus, you can pick one that suits your workplace or team the most, and reap its benefits.
