10 Winter Team Building Activities And Ideas For Your Group This Season
Are you struggling to keep your team focused and engaged during the winter season? Are there any activities your team will love, even when it’s cold and grey outside?
Of course, there are! Whether it’s heavily themed winter team building activities to keep the festive season bright, a charity event to bring your team together for a greater cause, or fun winter activities suitable for both in person and virtual teams, there’s something for everyone!
To help you sort through what you might need this winter season, we’ve compiled a list of 10 fun and exciting winter team building activities that will keep teams engaged, refreshed, and boost team morale during the winter months.
Why Is Team Building Needed In Winter?
It happens every year. The air gets a little colder, the skies get more grey, and the atmosphere seems to become a bit more dreary. Seasonal depression and the winter blues kick in and cause low energy among the majority of the population. For some industries it’s a quiet time of the year where business is slow and most employees are distracted with the holidays and looking forward to the holiday break. It can be a nightmare for business! How do companies keep their team focused and energized?
Team building is the BEST way to strengthen company culture and give employees the energy boost they need to make it through the end of the year. Trust us, we’ve seen it first hand. Participants so often walk into the room mumbling and groaning that they have to spend the next two hours at a team building event, only to leave with their team gleaming with joy because of how much fun they had.
The following winter team building events are fantastic options for building relationships and boosting employee moral, while allowing team members to keep their holiday spirit!
Choose A Themed Winter Team Building Activity
When companies are searching for winter team building ideas, they tend to gravitate toward generic winter activities like winter sports, ice skating, drinking hot chocolate, hosting a secret Santa, etc. People love a theme and want to do things that fit the season! These are all great ideas for keeping teams engaged on a small scale, but what about the larger teams and company-wide events?
Here are a couple team building ideas that can be done on a larger scale and still keep that festive winter activity feeling to combat those winter blues!
Escape The Arctic – Exciting Winter Themed Escape Game
Team members must really work together in this virtual escape room as participants find themselves stuck in a snowstorm during an expedition to the Arctic. Working together virtually, players collaborate using an app on their personal devices to explore a small hut and figure out a way to call for help before the snowstorm gets too dangerous and snows them in!
Interact with an explorer’s bag, find a radio, turn the power back on, and call for help before it’s too late! This is a fun activity with high-stakes for adventurous teams who are looking for virtual games. Does your team have what it takes to Escape The Arctic?
Pub Quiz – Trivia Night
Apart from the classic winter activity or snowball fight, there’s another fun winter tradition that occurs during the cold season.. pub crawls! For those who love a trivia night at the pub with their coworkers, Pub Quiz is the perfect winter team building activity to escape the cold weather and warm up with your group.
Pub Quiz takes all the best concepts of a trivia night at a pub and ensures each team member gets to participate. Teammates work together on a series of challenges throughout the event, talking at their table to come up with a group consensus for their answers and writing them on their answer sheet. Whether it’s pop culture trivia, music challenges, visual puzzles, or a Fact or Fiction game, there’s something for everyone on the team.
So this winter, team building doesn’t have to be stale or boring – it can feel like a classic night at the pub!
Donate To Charity and Give Back
Winter is the hardest time of year for anyone struggling, in need, or living in poverty. Shelters are full, it’s cold outside, and food banks have a hard time keeping shelves stocked during the winter months. It’s the perfect time to host a charitable team building event and come together as a cohesive group to give back to a local community!
Giving back not only benefits the community, but unites a team and helps them work towards a common goal. It’s the reason for the season! Below are a few ideas that will help keep your team engaged while working towards the greater good.
ArCANtecture
In the spirit of giving, consider giving back to a local community food bank, which are often depleted in the winter months, with our charitable team building event, ArCANtecture! Corporate groups are tasked with building an innovative structure out of non-perishable canned goods that will eventually be donated to charity.
Provided with canned goods and an outline or theme based on the meeting/company’s message, each team becomes architects as they work together to build something marvelous. Each table will also receive tickets that can be traded in for decorative items at a supply depot to put their ‘ArCANtecture’ over the top.
After teams present their masterpiece, each structure of canned goods will be judged and voted to see who will be named the winning team. If your goal this winter is to boost employee morale and help colleagues work better together while benefitting a great cause, ArCANtecture may be the perfect activity!
Canned Goods Carnival
If you like the idea of donating canned goods to charity in the light of giving but have a bit more of an energetic crowd, we can transport you to the carnival! The Canned Goods Carnival, that is. Without needing to leave your meeting area and arrange any transportation for a real carnival, your group will be tasked with creating carnival games out of canned goods and decorating supplies.
The rules are simple: utilize all the canned goods at the table, create a sign or poster featuring the name of the game, use decorations from the supply depot, and feature at least one game item (a type of ball, plastic or foam rings, or bean bags).
After the games are created, teams take time to play each carnival game and vote for their favorite ones. The winning team is awarded with medals to honor the best game! The opportunity for great employee engagement while giving back to charity is what makes Canned Goods Carnival one of our best team building activities!
Indoor and In-Person Team Building Activities
Another setback businesses face when choosing team building during the winter or fall is finding a location. During any other time of the year there is access to outdoor spaces, travel is easier, and there are many additional outdoor activities to do. In the winter, however, groups are limited to keeping things indoors. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing!
Indoor team building can save time and money on travel and allows your team to be together, acting as one unit. The following events allow team members to work together in one room where they can stay warm and work on building relationships!
Unlock The Mystery
Escape Rooms are a fantastic option for team building as it forces people to work together and strategize using team dynamics and different skill sets. The problem lies in that it’s hard to do an escape room for 300+ people.
Well, with our tabletop escape game, Unlock The Mystery, you can have the whole company participate in an escape room without having to go off-site!
During Unlock The Mystery, each table will have 60 minutes to figure out how to unlock a big mysterious box at the front of the room. To aid in this, each table is presented with a locked chest that holds various puzzles, clues, and props.
Once solved and used together, these clues will point towards a solution to the box at the front of the room. Whichever team is first to unlock the mystery, gets to keep whatever is inside!
Strategy is key in this team bonding event as coworkers discover each other’s strengths and weaknesses and how to utilize them. True teamwork and some friendly competition is what makes this a great option for groups searching for indoor winter team building activities during the winter months!
Clued In
For groups who live in colder climates and aren’t able to do any outdoor team building activities, an indoor mystery could be the perfect option, allowing in-person teams to meet inside during the winter!
Transform into detectives and huddle close in this scavenger hunt style activity that has teams testing their skills to solve a mysterious crime. After an anonymous call, the detectives are tasked with completing police work and searching evidence in order to eliminate suspects, crimes, and locations to help make an arrest.
By solving clues, looking through crime scene photos, completing case work, and taking video evidence, the team of detectives will receive a name, crime, or location to cross off their list. The final team of detectives that scores the most points and correctly solves the crime, will be named top team of the evening!
This mystery will help in-person teams focus on their listening skills and deductive reasoning, making it a great idea for a fun twist on winter team building!
Holiday Team Building Activities
‘Tis the season and everyone is looking for a holiday activity for their team! The holidays are the best part about winter, after all. The only thing team members can think about during this time is vacation, spending time with their family, and gift giving!
Team building during the holidays can be hard to schedule because of that, but we have quite a few options that are great additions to your holiday party that everyone will look forward to! These team building events are designed to get your team into the holiday spirit and will show your team members how much you appreciate the work they’ve done this year.
For teams who are not in-person, we have some remote team building activities that are easy to schedule and perfect to ring in the holiday season!
Red Wagon Brigade – The Perfect Holiday Team Building Event
Nothing says the holiday season like a big red wagon full of toys! Except this time, it’s not Santa and his sleigh. It’s our Red Wagon Brigade with toys for charity! This team building activity is perfect for winter as it allows participants to play Santa for the day by providing a wagon full of toys to local children in need during the holiday season.
Each team will assemble a red wagon and decorate it as best they can for a chance to win the title of Most Creative Wagon. Throughout the event, there are several additional opportunities to win toys in challenges that are played around team tables and facilitated by the emcee. Some sample challenges include Toy Trivia, Name That Tune, Close Up Pictures, Balloon Bounce, and more!
Once all challenges have been completed, winners are announced for having the most toys in their wagon as well as having the best decorated wagon. The real winners, however, are the children of the designated charity that now have fun games to play with throughout the holiday season!
Toy Chest Challenge – A Winter Season Miracle
Nothing says holiday cheer quite like an event filled with toys, gift giving, and holiday cheer. For another charitable event this holiday season, consider our Toy Chest Challenge where teams compete in fast-paced challenges that utilize popular games and ends with a donation of the toys and games to a local non-profit.
Whether it’s a fun game using Uno Cards, a race with dice, a balancing act with frisbees and blocks, or a closeup puzzle of Hot Wheels, these toy challenges are designed to let out our inner children as we take a break from our busy schedules during the winter months.
Points are awarded to the teams who complete each challenge successfully and the team who receives the most points, wins! All of the toys and games are then donated to a local charity for the children to enjoy. Toy Chest Challenge is one of the best winter team building activities to choose from for teams looking to brighten up a child’s day during the holidays.
Oh! What Fun – Virtual Winter Team Building Activity
Want to give your team a holiday gift but everyone is away for the holidays? Are your remote employees wishing they could spend more time together? Oh! What Fun is a virtual winter team building activity that is specifically designed for all the virtual teams out there!
Meeting on an online conferencing platform, teams will be put into breakout rooms where they each access an app and have to work together to complete challenges. The game screen features a winter wonderland where participants must help a red truck make its through the snowy village to get to the center of town, completing holiday-themed tasks and challenges along the way.
While you may not be able to enjoy each other’s company in person, this virtual game helps boost team morale and will get your team members into the holiday spirit!
Jingle Mingle – Festive Winter Team Building Activity
The holidays are the perfect time for any new team members to get to know one another in a social setting and feel comfortable in a company’s corporate culture. However, for teams that are remote, typical winter team building activities like Winter Olympics or learning how to ice skate are out of the question. Thankfully, one of our remote team building games, Jingle Mingle, works perfectly for team members trying to get to know each other!
Like other virtual events, teams gather on a video call and access the game through an app. Before breaking off into separate teams, an ice breaker is held with the whole group to give team members a chance to relax and build camaraderie. Then, teams are sent into their breakout rooms to mingle with one another and complete holiday themed challenges like holiday trivia, fun winter puzzles, and photos/video tasks that show off their festive cheer.
Teams will “mingle all the way” to the end of the game, which “wraps” with them coming back to the main room to view highlights of submitted photos and videos that will “sleigh” them all!
Wildly Different
