Post Punk Kitchen Forum

So, our department (25+ people) has been split up into four groups with new team leaders. And I thought, if we are split up now, why not make something fun out of it? We all do the same kind of work (office job), and I thought it would be fun to be a bit competitive. Not like, who wrote the most invoice per month, but - yeah. I dunno. Now my team leader thought that was a great idea, and what I had on my mind. So, people who are still reading this: Do YOU have an idea? It shouldnt be too time consuming. Or how about other things that make work more fun? So far, our work is pretty conservative...

My work is pretty similar- I'm in a branch of about 20 people, split into four teams. We don't really have any formal competitions or anything, but we do have payday morning teas, with one team catering it at a time. We get a bit competitive about which team can bring the best spread. It's fun because we all get to bake or cook (or just bring something nice), and everyone gets to eat so no one really loses!

We also have decorating competitions at Christmas (and sometimes other holidays/events, like Halloween), where each team decorates their work area and the winners get some kind of terrible prize (like a $2 bottle of wine). One team a couple of years ago got super into it and built a huge Santa's workshop thing out of cardboard boxes, with a door that you had to walk through to get to their cubicles.

All of our other competitions are boring and work-related (ie. who's work was on the cover of the national newspapers the least this week? You win! Your prize is getting to go home on time today!) but those things can make it a bit more fun.

At my previous job we had bake-off competitions. Our boss was a bit of a control freak so she would pick the recipe and it was always a vegan recipe (because of me) from "The Joy of Vegan Baking ". Of course she would try to pick something strange like chocolate cake with beets. She knew I bated beets from our CSA deliveries at work.

Anyway, I would mostly win a lovely cheap 1st place bow and show it off and brag to no end.

My other half's workplace has little competitions in place between departments - like wearing red on Monday, blue on Tuesday etc and the department that has the greatest percentage of people who meet the challenge gets a point. They had a wear a hat challenge. And a bring your teddy to work challenge. There's a prize at the company barbeque for the department with the most points - it's only something small like a box of sweeties. It seems to liven up Financial Services.

We had a "take the stairs" competition. It worked well as most people worked on the 3rd-6th floors and often took the elevator. Might not work so well if everyone is on floor 2 or 27. We tallied up how many flights of stairs the members of the teams went up (down didn't count) for a month period or something and then the winning team got, some sort of small prize and hella bragging rights.

They did it as a BIG competition at the school I worked at and had awesome prizes... theirs was a "climb mt XXX" (different mountain each year) and you could form teams of up to 5 people. Any team that climbed the mountain in stairs got a coffee cup or something and the team that climbed the most got a big prize. We took this idea and made it small for our smaller group within the school. Partially to stay in shape and partially because it was fun.

We also had our own version of the Olympics, for which you would sign up in the company's gym. It mainly involved weight lifting competitions, measuring starting points and then it would allow you to improve over time and after a couple of months, the winner would be whoever was able to bench press (or whatever they call it...it was various categories for arms, legs, etc.) the most.

I was inordinately proud of a young woman in my staff. She won gold in many categories lifting heavier weights than the guys. The guys were constantly checking each other's stats, making sure they were working harder than their male colleagues. None of them ever thought of keeping track of the ladies' stats. Muwhahahaha.

I like the idea's in Ruby Rose's post. Cheap and easy but I could see how it would be effective to lighten the mood and promote a sense of team and all that corporate jargon.

We've had a good time doing department Halloween competitions. My dept did Pirates of the Caribbean one year; we all dressed as pirates and drank tea out of rum bottles and built a big ship out of the cubes in the middle of the department area. We did Clue where we dressed as characters and staged our offices as crime scenes and had the judges walk through and guess who done it. Another department did Beauty Shop of Horrors that was pretty cool, since they got to get all bloodied and zombified.
The downside is that it can become time-intensive if you are competitive (like we seem to be) and really want to win (and go all out). We'd typically plan a few months ahead of time so that we could get everything built/decorated during the work days and still get work done. The upside is that you had a few months of people on your team working closely together on something fun, not just a one time deal.

Oooh, I like that a lot! What a clever way to inspire health and team spirit!



Oh man, I would get so unreasonably excited about that! I love costumes and building things. So much fun! I am always so jealous of fun workplaces like that; we are horribly boring and stodgy. I need to do something about that.

I love the costume ideas but I'm sooooo not a fan of turning the workplace into a competitive environment. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. I would be pretty upset if I worked somewhere that started doing that. And the "physical challenge" things could be really problematic if you have people in your workplace who are not physically able to participate, and if those are people who have invisible disabilities that they haven't publicly disclosed to everyone, you would not necessarily know that you have people in that situation.

I don't like office activities that involve things other than working, aside from chipping in for the lottery. I want to go to work, work and get paid. If we have the free time at work to do non-work stuff, then I'd rather have the time to myself outside of work. Time off from work definitely makes work more fun.

Choirqueer, you make a good point about office competiveness. I think for sure you need the right balance of people that will ensure it stays fun. And for the record, I should have mentioned that the Halloween competition was really just for bragging rights and a dept lunch (which was funny because we had dept lunches all the time for no reason anyway).
For sure the fun was in the "doing" rather than in the competing/judging. We all had a good time not only doing our own dept project but then wandering around and oohhing and aahhing over everyone else's. Its all in the attitude, but yeah, I can see how some people can ruin it for everyone if they take it too far. In fact my boss at that time was ultra competitive and our department had a variety of people (backgrounds, ages, personalities, etc) and I had to tell him like dude, chillax, this is supposed to be fun and not everyone is out for blood. You'll take us to lunch if we lose anyway.

Another idea: scavenger hunts. They can be either work-related or not, on the premises or not, over the top* or not, long or not. Just one person would need to organize and not participate obviously unless someone from one of the other depts is willing to help out.

*We had an over the top one that was more like Amazing Race style. My boss is one of 12 kids, so he recruited some of his siblings to man stations as needed around the valley and come up with clues, and we drove around Las Vegas all day with our teams trying to solve these puzzles. It was fun. An insurance nightmare I'm sure, but a great teambuilder.

ohh, emmalv, you could take the scavenger hunt a bit further as a team thing and so nobody gets left out, by having each team assigned to plan the scavenger hunt for one of the other teams. or take turns where each team hosts a scavenger hunt for the whole rest of the department, which then has the added bonus of your team being able to staff the event AND you would each get to participate in like 3 different things.

My work's owner makes me try to organize "fun" things all the time (as if I don't have enough to do, but I am the only manager in the company who works directly with every single staff member). I half-heartedly do, but we'd much rather just wait until the owner is gone and go drink on the patio after-hours.

People do the wear "theme of the week whatever" every Thursday. Like everybody is supposed to wear pink or stripes or school tee shirt or whatever. I don't usually participate because my wardrobe is super limited, but most people seem to really enjoy it.

But everything isn't always going to be inclusive. Physical challenges like the stairs thing is healthy and fun for a lot of people. I've seen similar at school too and people really do love it. Sure, I can't participate, and others can't either, but I'm sure if I tried, I'd find things I could join in with too. Maybe those challenges help somebody else get in shape so they can enjoy doing things they couldn't before, maybe with their kids.

I do think that an activity with the specific purpose of building team cohesion should actually something that everyone on the team will enjoy and be able to participate in. I just don't see this kind of physical challenge as being suitable for a workplace where it's not part of the job. If people want to get in better shape, they can do that outside of work without creating an environment where people are going to be pressured to do something they're not interested in and isn't really part of their job, or made to feel guilty for "letting their team down" by not participating.

I guess I'm just used to that sort of thing. I can't really think of things I've ever actually been included in much of anything anywhere, so I'm mostly just happy if other people are having fun. It seems effective anyway. But I think it depends on the team size. It's a lot more reasonable to be inclusive when it's a few people and not 200. But most outside things at my school revolve around athletic stuff and running since most of the department is really into that.

The one I hate is the blood drive and all the pressure to give blood. That stresses me and makes me feel bad.

It all is a fine line. I think you are always going to have someone who can't or maybe just doesn't want to participate. Its harder to be looser about it if its a teambuilder, because that sort of implies that everyone should join in (and if everyone should join in you should plan something that everyone can participate in, no jumping out of planes or anything). But if you label it as "hey a fun thing for everyone to get together and do if you want to" there's less pressure. If someone wants to bow out, whatever, that's fine.

We had a volleyball tournament in the park last Friday. I hate volleyball and didn't want to get all sweaty because I had stuff to do after work. So I put in an appearance, ate lunch (especially because the organizers made sure I got a special vegan meal - total dick move if I didn't show up, IMO. and the meal was delish), chatted with people for a bit, and went back to work. I think that is probably how OP or anyone else would want to present it - its fun, its a diversion from work, come and participate, come and don't participate, or don't come and no judgment (but you can't just take the afternoon off - that's the management in me :)
ITS SUPPOSED TO BE FUN and not anxiety inducing.

That's the thing though: isn't forced fun almost always anxiety inducing?

Not if you don't have to participate if you don't want to. If someone is telling me "you WILL go and you WILL have fun," yeah, I think it could be anxiety inducing. Forcing someone to go and building up some weird false "it WILL be fun because it has to be" thing is the antithesis of what is trying to be accomplished. But if its presented as and the vibe around it is "hey, go hang out if you want to - it could be a fun time away from the daily grind hangin with your work peeps" I don't think that would make anyone hyperventilate.

prank war.

Love it.

Participated in many an-unsanctioned office prank war in my time...

i think prank war is the best. in japan we set up prank wars in my school [without the boss's knowledge, which made it even more fun] and FB updates tell me that even 15 years later people are still talking about it.

We recently within the past year livened up our office, and I have to say it's a much better working environment now. These are some things we have done.

Fun Fridays - We take a break and share a bottle of wine or have beers after 3pm. Everyone still works until whenever but we just touch base with one and another and talk about our weekend plans for a minute. It takes the edge off and is a good end to a busy week. But this is touchy as there could be people with substance issues in your office. So always check about that first and make sure there won't be anyone that's offended or pressured by drinking in the office.

Happy Hours - We work in Philly, so there are lots of bars and they almost all offer happy hour pricing for drinks and food. Gathering up everyone for an outing can be fun.

Coffee and snack outings - We will go in groups to Starbucks or any coffee shop to get "treats" if its been a stressful day or week.

Brown Bag Wednesdays - This is basically everyone packing a lunch on this day and we sit and eat in the conference room together and talk about something work related. Or watch a webinar about something. Still work related but something different than eating at your desk again.

Summer hours - This has to come from the top down obviously. But we get to leave early on Fridays between Memorial Day and Labor Day as long as we are making up the time during the rest of the week.

Birthday celebrations - We have someone who loves to bake, so she volunteered to make cakes whenever it is someone's birthday. Then we all gather and sing happy birthday and eat cake! I get left out of this because its never vegan or gluten free. But hey, I still celebrate and get to take a break. And when it was my birthday she made me frozen chocolate covered bananas and chocolate covered strawberries.