The Play Strategy: Aligning Games with Business Goals
Before you get stuck into the list of activities, understanding why you are using these games to play at work is key. We use the Naboo Engagement Quadrant to help organisers pick the right tool for the job based on two criteria: the time commitment and the result you’re aiming for.The Naboo Engagement Quadrant Framework
This framework guides the selection process, ensuring the activity aligns with your current team needs (e.g., a quick energiser versus deep conflict resolution).
- Low Commitment, Quick Win: Activities requiring less than 15 minutes, ideal for meeting icebreakers or mid-day slumps (e.g., Two Truths and a Lie). Goal: Instant energy, quick involvement.
- Mid-level Commitment, Communication Focus: Activities requiring 15 to 30 minutes, focused on looking at team processes and getting immediate feedback. Goal: Improve clarity and trust (e.g., Blind Drawing).
- High Commitment, Strategic Insight: Activities requiring 30+ minutes, focused on tricky problem-solving and resource management. Goal: Reveal how the team works and thinks strategically (e.g., Egg Drop Challenge).
Scenario: Applying the Framework
Imagine a marketing team split across Edinburgh and a smaller office in Bristol, struggling to hand over work smoothly between the content creators and project managers. They need insight into how they collaborate and prioritise. A quick icebreaker won't fix the underlying issue. They should choose a high commitment, strategic insight game, such as the Marshmallow Challenge or Lost at Sea, to see how team members naturally take the lead, allocate resources, and handle tight deadlines.
The 20 Best Games to Play at Work for Team Cohesion
We have categorised these activities based on their primary function in the workplace, offering a diverse toolkit of games to play at work for any scenario.Quick-Hit Energisers and Icebreakers
These activities require little to no setup and are brilliant for transitions or meeting starters, ensuring instant involvement.1. Two Truths and a Lie
This classic icebreaker encourages colleagues to share surprising personal details, making it easier for new teams or newly integrated members to bond quickly. The guessing element fosters active listening and helps teams find common ground, which is crucial for getting on better.
2. Word Association
A fast-paced verbal exercise that demands quick thinking. Participants sit in a circle, and each person must say a word immediately associated with the previous one. This game shows interesting differences in how people think across different roles, demonstrating how a compliance analyst and a creative designer might approach the same concept differently.
3. Would You Rather
This simple conversational tool reveals personal values and preferences without making anyone feel uncomfortable. By posing fun dilemmas (e.g., "Would you rather have a 20% pay rise or unlimited paid holiday?"), teams can learn what motivates their colleagues and how they make choices.
4. Silent Line-Up
This non-verbal communication challenge forces the group to organise themselves according to a specific criterion (e.g., birthday month, height) without speaking. It highlights the importance of visual cues, body language, and shared intent. It’s a great exercise for teams that rely heavily on written communication to practise aligning their efforts non-verbally.
5. Human Rock-Paper-Scissors
This is a full-body version of the classic game played as a tournament. It creates immediate physical energy and laughter. Crucially, losers "cheer" for the person who defeated them, turning elimination into spontaneous cheering and ensuring everyone stays involved until the final champion is found. These games to play at work are perfect for shaking off that post-lunch slump.
Communication and Trust Builders
These games to play at work focus on improving clear processes, verbal instructions, and building confidence in your teammates.6. Blind Drawing
This exercise involves pairing up participants back-to-back. One person describes a simple image, and the partner draws based only on the verbal instructions. It powerfully shows the gap between what you mean and what is understood, highlighting the need for clear instructions and confirmation steps in day-to-day work.
7. Minefield
An office trust exercise where one partner is blindfolded and must navigate an obstacle course (the "minefield") using only the verbal guidance of their teammate. This activity builds high-stakes trust and refines the guide’s ability to give precise, timely, and practical instructions—a perfect exercise for mentoring or handing over tricky tasks.
8. Helium Stick
A seemingly impossible coordination challenge where a group attempts to lower a lightweight stick to the ground while keeping their index fingers touching it at all times. The challenge lies in the tendency for participants to unconsciously push upward. Success requires unified, slow-motion coordination and shows how small, unintended movements by individuals can easily disrupt a group objective.
9. Office Pictionary
Using a whiteboard or virtual drawing tool, teams compete to guess work-appropriate terms drawn by a designated teammate. This fosters creative thinking under time pressure and encourages communication that relies on abstract concepts rather than language, proving essential for cross-functional teams.
10. Office Trivia
This activity tests knowledge about the company, industry, or team members themselves. Well-structured trivia can reinforce company culture, fill knowledge gaps across departments, and create healthy competition. For team events, this can easily be scaled into a major company-wide competition.
Strategic Thinking and Design Challenges
These games to play at work demand problem-solving, managing resources, and strategic planning.11. Marshmallow Challenge
Teams use limited materials (spaghetti sticks, string, tape) to build the tallest free-standing tower capable of supporting a single marshmallow on top. This classic design challenge reveals assumptions (the marshmallow must go on top, forcing rapid prototyping) and collaboration styles under constraints.
12. Egg Drop Challenge
Teams are given a short time and limited resources (e.g., straws, paper, tape) to engineer a device that prevents a raw egg from breaking when dropped from a height. This puts pressure on resource management, collaborative design, and weighing up risk versus reward.
13. 20 Questions (Strategic Deduction)
Framed as a strategic game, one person chooses a concept, and the team collaboratively asks yes/no questions to deduce the answer within a 20-question limit. This exercise sharpens strategic questioning and forces teams to process information quickly and logically.
14. Fortunately/Unfortunately
A creative storytelling game where participants alternate continuing a narrative, with each person starting their contribution with "Fortunately..." followed by the next person starting with "Unfortunately..." This builds on others' ideas and reveals how teams react to and incorporate unexpected challenges into an evolving plan.
15. Office Scavenger Hunt
Teams race to find a list of items or complete tasks around the workplace. This gets people moving and collaborating across departments. To make it more strategic, include clues that require chatting to colleagues in different departments. This activity works well as part of a larger team-building day; you can find more ideas on the Naboo blog for structured approaches to these challenges.
Virtual and Physical Engagement
Whether you are connecting distributed employees or energising an in-person meeting, these activities ensure full participation.16. Virtual Scavenger Hunt
The remote version of the classic hunt, asking participants to retrieve specific items from their immediate environment (e.g., "Show us something blue that sparks joy"). It breaks the video call monotony, encourages movement, and offers quick, humanising glimpses into colleagues’ home lives, thus boosting remote morale.
17. Online Trivia (Breakout Rooms)
Virtual trivia thrives when utilising breakout rooms for team collaboration. Distribute questions in the main room, send teams to small groups to discuss answers, and bring them back for scoring. This format ensures that quieter team members actively contribute to the answers.
18. Show and Tell
A simple yet powerful remote activity. Each person shares an object that has meaning to them and explains its significance. This builds empathy and reveals the personal stories, values, and interests that define colleagues outside their immediate job function, fostering stronger bonds.
19. Paper Plane Competition
A low-cost, high-fun activity requiring a single sheet of paper per person. Teams compete based on design, distance, and stability. It encourages playful creativity and introduces friendly competition, making it one of the simplest games to play at work for immediate involvement.
20. Office Olympics
A series of absurd, short competitions utilising common office supplies (e.g., rubber band archery, paper clip stacking, chair races). The focus is on shared laughter and movement, perfect for an afternoon when energy levels drop. These lighthearted challenges transform the workday environment into a playground for collaboration.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Implementing Games
Successfully implementing games to play at work requires thought and framing. Managers often make mistakes that undermine the positive effects.Mistake 1: Mandatory Fun
The problem: Forcing participation erodes the spontaneous enjoyment that builds morale. Teams sense when an activity is checked off a list rather than authentically encouraged.
Practical consideration: Frame activities as high-value opportunities for connection, not mandatory tasks. Start with small, voluntary games to play at work and build trust before introducing complex, large-group challenges, perhaps at your next team away day in the Scottish Highlands.
Mistake 2: Failing to Debrief
The problem: The value of many team-building games to play at work (especially strategic ones like the Marshmallow Challenge) lies not in who wins, but in looking closely at the process.
Practical consideration: Always schedule five minutes afterwards to discuss the activity. Ask: "What process did we follow? Who emerged as the leader? What communication style proved most effective? How does this reflect our workflow challenges?"
Mistake 3: Poor Context Alignment
The problem: Choosing the wrong activity for the goal (e.g., running a high-trust physical game with a newly formed, nervous team).
Practical consideration: Use the Naboo Engagement Quadrant. If trust is low, start with Quick Wins like Word Association. Save high-vulnerability games to play at work like the Minefield or Trust Fall for teams with established psychological safety.
Measuring the Impact of Structured Play
While fun is subjective, the results of effective games to play at work can be measured. Companies should link these activities to clear improvements in how the team operates.1. Observing Communication Flow
After implementing communication games like Blind Drawing or Silent Line-Up, monitor key work processes. Look for changes in the clarity of documentation, how often proactive check-ins happen, or the reduction in wasted work due to misunderstood instructions. Qualitative feedback during follow-up sessions is also crucial.
2. Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
A common metric for assessing team loyalty and satisfaction. High morale and a feeling of connection—direct results of effective games to play at work—often correlate with higher eNPS scores. Track eNPS changes quarterly, particularly after focused periods of team engagement activities.
3. Cross-Departmental Collaboration
Use internal surveys to measure how easy people feel it is to collaborate between specific departments. If well-designed games to play at work focus on breaking down these barriers, you should see an increase in positive responses regarding shared resources and mutual understanding between those groups.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should we incorporate these activities into the workday?
For quick energisers, aim for 5-10 minutes at the start of weekly meetings. For deep team-building games to play at work that require strategic insight, schedule 30-45 minutes bi-weekly or reserve them for dedicated quarterly away days.
Are competitive games counterproductive to team building?
No, provided the competition is framed as friendly and lighthearted. Competition, when focused on solving a puzzle or a silly challenge (like Office Olympics), can unify teams against an external goal and generate shared excitement without creating internal friction.
What is the minimum group size required for these activities?
Most quick games to play at work work best with 5 to 15 participants. Activities focused on complex coordination, such as the Human Knot or Helium Stick, generally require a minimum of 8 people to demonstrate the systemic coordination challenges effectively.
Can these games really help resolve conflicts?
Directly resolving conflict is complex, but these activities build the foundation needed for conflict resolution. Games focused on communication (e.g., Blind Drawing) or consensus (e.g., Lost at Sea) provide a neutral environment to practice crucial skills like listening, negotiation, and giving clear feedback, which transfers positively to conflict situations.
What if my team is highly introverted?
Avoid high-pressure or public-speaking games to play at work initially. Start with low-stakes, anonymous activities (like collecting "Would You Rather" responses digitally) or challenges that focus on shared tasks rather than personal sharing (like the Paper Plane Competition or the Marshmallow Challenge).