Ways of increasing productivity, boosting engagement, enhancing teamwork, building workplace social ties, encouraging a healthy work-life balance, and lowering the rate of employee turnover.
Photo credit: Fauxels
Raising employee morale in the workplace isn’t just for fun. It is a way of increasing employee productivity, boosting engagement, enhancing teamwork, building workplace social ties, encouraging a healthy work-life balance, and lowering the rate of employee turnover. There are endless benefits of fun-filled, stress-free workplaces. So, to help you raise morale within your workforce, we have listed 10 fun-filled and budget-friendly employee morale activities. Let’s get to it!
1. Scavenger hunt
This is both a morale boosting and team building activity. The hunt can include any item that’s readily available in the workplace, from staplers, pens, coffee makers, books- anything! Hide them around the office, make a list of all the items you hide, divide the employees into multiple groups, and then let the groups compete in finding those items. The team that gets the most items within a set deadline wins. Just be sure to make the competition fair by assembling teams of equal abilities, especially physically. Don’t put young employees in one group because that might disadvantage the teams that end up with most aging, probably unfit, employees.
2. Blind wine waiter
This activity boosts morale and helps team members to become better communicators. It is also a great way of nurturing leaders.
Make 2 or more teams of 5 people each. Let each team choose a team leader from within the group. The leader sits in a chair with his/her hands tied. The other 4 members are blindfolded, so it is only the team leader who can see. The blindfolded members act as waiters. Each team is given 1 wine bottle, 1 glass and 1 corkscrew, with each item placed in different locations in the room. The leader has to help the blindfolded team members to locate each item by directing them verbally. He/she cannot use his/her hands because they are tied. When one member finds one item, say the wine bottle, he/she cannot find any other item. Other members have to step up. Once they’ve found all the 3 items, the team member that didn’t find anything has to serve wine to the leader. The last bit is the trickiest because the waiter is still blindfolded and the leader’s hands are tied. The team that manages to do all that in the least amount of time wins.
3. Cooking
This will require you to invest in kitchen remodeling if your office kitchen isn’t in good shape, or if you don’t have an office kitchen to begin with. Ask team members who share the same native country, culture, and heritage to prepare the best native dish they can think of and then serve it to the rest of the team. This can be a week-long event or a one-day event if the employees are open to bringing pre-packaged meals. You can spice up things by asking each group to prepare a recipe for their preferred meal and then exchange the recipes so that teams prepare meals from foreign cultures.
4. Lunchtime Olympics
Any game that fits within the lunch break qualifies for this activity. It could be Velcro darts, pool table, bean bag toss, or non-beer pong- anything goes! You can even invent new games. They can be month-long events where you keep a running tally of scores and then give awards every end month. The award can be anything the company can afford.
5. Blast music
Perfect for those lazy afternoons when everyone’s energy is starting to slump and nothing seems to progress. Let people dance and cheer and sing and clap and do all sorts of body movements with the music at full blast. Music can be a great re-energizer.
6. Blind drawing
Similar to the blindfolded waiter, except that team members aren’t blindfolded in the literal sense. The activity involves team members of two. One member is given all accessories necessary for drawing and the other member is given a picture. The two sit facing opposite directions such that they cannot see each other. The member with the picture should describe the picture to the partner and then the partner tries to draw a replica of the original picture. Marks are awarded by how close to the original the replica is.
7. Laughter yoga
A little unorthodox but psychologists argue that it works. Laughter yoga is founded on studies that claim induced laughter is as effective in lowering stress levels as spontaneous laughter. Hold a small laughter session before or after an energy-draining activity to raise team morale.
8. For the love of art!
Create art together as a team. It could be a mural on the wall or, you know, anything with some artistic value!
9. Themed office days
Drop that professional, formal look for a themed dress code at least once a month. You know, loosen a bit and have some fun. Don’t regulate anything here. Just let the imaginations run wild!
10. Volunteer as a team
Humans love to help- or at least to be seen to help. Your employees will feel reenergized and motivated to work after a day of community outreach or development program. Even better: Take these voluntary programs to the neighborhoods where your employees live. Say, hold a fundraiser for one of your team members’ churches.
Conclusion
There are tons of morale boosting activities to try. It is down to you to decide which ones works for your company and which ones you can afford. In whatever you do, though, don’t rule out the power of a fun work environment.
