A few weeks ago, the FourSquare mayorship of our office was up for grabs. Over time, a clear winner began to emerge, and the competition became one-sided. While the battle is now basically over, it illustrated how good-natured competitions within the office can be fun for everyone.
These competitions increase dialogue between coworkers, offering more opportunities for them to connect with one another at work. This provides another way for employees to get to know each other better, and will create a livelier office environment. These are some other fun ideas for office competitions:
- Team Events – Separate the office into several teams, and create a fun competition that encourages everyone to participate. Some events can be beneficial to an entire community as well, like a food charity drive or a recycling contest, while also improving valuable intangibles such as teamwork and overall morale within the office. Provide incentives for participation and rewards to everyone for their engagement.
- Office Olympics – Plan to annually take a full afternoon out of the office for this event. Choose multiple activities, and develop a scoring method that aggregates accomplishments at the end of the day to determine the top three finishers. Some of the easier events to run are paper and wastebasket free throw shooting, rubber band archery (shoot at a safe target not at coworkers), and the crucial best coffee contest (judged by all).
- Out-of-Office Challenges – This is more of an activity than a competition. Spend a day at a ropes course completing group challenges with all members of your office. This teaches people to think together creatively to solve problems and accomplish tasks. This is a great activity to help each individual build confidence and the team to develop skills outside of the office environment.
Prizes for all of these activities can be tickets to a concert or sporting event, an extra personal day, cash prizes, or anything else that coworkers would see as an incentive. Be sure to ask for feedback from coworkers after events, so the next competition is even more fun than the last one. What other ideas and suggestions do you have for office competitions? How has your office used these in the past?
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] from employees is advised. Having people participate as “helpers” or in competition can catch their interest and provide you with some interesting [...]