Team-building: which activity to choose for my seminar?

Apr 30
6 min read

Your company is evolving, its needs are changing, your teams need a break to refocus around a common vision, a global strategy, or simply to strengthen their bonds... A seminar seems to be needed! But beyond meetings and work times, you need an activity that allows you to make the day more fun and memorable.

Olympiads, escape games, murder parties... Which team-building activity should you choose for your teams? This is what we explain to you in this article.

Organize the team-building: the steps not to miss
Define the objectives: the foundation of a successful seminar
Choice of activity: for each goal its team-building

1) Organize the team-building: the steps not to miss

In order to best organize the team-building activity, it is appropriate to proceed with rigor to maximize the ROI produced by the event, whatever it may be.

DISCUSS: Take time to talk with the people who will be involved in the team-building activity. Ask them about their vision of the activity, their expectations, their obstacles, and the first emerging ideas. This will allow you to outline a first draft of the objectives to focus on.
TARGET: Thanks to these initial moments of exchange, you will then be able to clarify the objectives of the team-building and prioritize them. In doing so, the choice of activity will be easier.
FRAME: What means do you have at your disposal to turn your objectives into activity? How much time do you have to work on it? What budget is allocated to you? Within what scope can you imagine the activity? What is your deadline? Establish an initial backward schedule in order to understand the scope of the project and succeed in framing its organization.
CHOOSE: Make sure to collaborate with a team-building organizer whose values and identity resonate with yours. For the day to make sense, both for your company and your employees, choose local partners or those whose practices reflect the pillars of sustainable development.
EVALUATE: In order to measure ROI, establishing KPIs (key performance indicators) is key. For each goal, define realistic and truly measurable KPIs to assess the success of the team-building. Indeed, while your employees may provide individual feedback on their experience, this will not allow you to evaluate all the ins and outs of the established objectives. Utilizing this data will enable you to understand the positive aspects of the experience as well as the areas to improve for future iterations.

2) Define the objectives: the foundation of a successful seminar

As previously mentioned, the established objectives are the guides that will allow you to choose the activity suitable for your teams. Be careful not to set too many objectives, which could make your team-building activity lose clarity and, more broadly, the event in which it is embedded. As a consequence, this could also harm the image of your management, whose intentions might no longer be understood by the participants and everyone to whom you communicate before and afterwards. Therefore, always make sure to follow a few objectives, prioritized among themselves and perfectly understandable, both for you and for your collaborators.

Here are some examples of objectives that can be used in the context of a team-building activity:

Motivate employees to increase productivity and loyalty
Strengthen team cohesion to improve work efficiency and develop new ways of communicating
Encourage self-improvement to stimulate initiative and self-confidence at work

These main objectives can be supported by more secondary objectives, but nevertheless present within your activity (raising awareness of a cause, reward after significant collective effort, improvement of stress management...).

These objectives can be shared with your team-building agency, if you use such a service provider, so that it can best adapt their product to your situation. At the castle, we very often work with the agency called Sodalis, that offers many activities.

Employees throw their scarves in the air during a team-building activity organized by Sodalis at the Château de Poudenas — Team-building activity organized by Sodalis at the Château de Poudenas

3) Choice of activity: for each goal its team-building

Here are some examples of types of team-building activities, according to the objectives pursued by your company.

a) To develop the cohesion of your teams and their ability to coordinate under pressure: escape games

An escape game is a puzzle game that is played in teams. While it is usually imagined to take place in a closed, indoor space, it can also take place outdoors! Teams must, within a set time, coordinate and combine their thoughts to solve numerous puzzles, until the resolution.

Escape games therefore allow you to develop the cohesion of your teams, by allowing everyone to contribute to the game and to feed the reflections, to coordinate (distribution of roles and responsibilities in some cases) but also to organize under the pressure of limited time (obligation to be methodical and efficient).

At the Château de Poudenas, escape games are possible both indoors and outdoors: the sequence of 6 rooms, which can be closed, allows for real progress in the activity. And outdoors, the playing area is huge: a 15-hectare park is available, as well as many other outdoor spaces (courtyard, back yard, esplanades, terrace...).

Collaborators are thinking about an escape game puzzle at the Château de Poudenas — Outdoor Escape Game organized by Sodalis at the Château de Poudenas

b) To combine cohesion and imagination: murder parties

A murder party is a live-action role-playing game where participants take on the roles of the protagonists of a fictional criminal case. The goal? Solve a murder... or cover it up. Each player receives a character sheet with information, secrets, and sometimes hidden objectives. Throughout the game, they have to interact with others, search, accuse, justify themselves... and uncover the truth. Unlike an escape game (focused on logical puzzles) or a simple board game, the murder party emphasizes acting, improvisation, and social interactions.

Thus, the murder party, in addition to being particularly memorable for your employees because it is uncommon and very theatrical (numerous decorative elements punctuate the game), will allow them to stimulate their cohesion (mutual aid, betrayals, shared role-playing spirit) as well as their imagination (by leaving room for improvisation and turning the game into a true escape from the everyday life of the company, through the embodiment of colorful characters).

At the Château de Poudenas, the setting is ideal for this kind of game: our numerous rooms allow for a variety of atmospheres, and the possibilities become endless when you want to immerse yourself in the role of a character. The bureau becomes a dark and mysterious library, the living room a bright and comfortable space with its period sofas, and the guardroom a solemn room with a majestic checkerboard floor...

Employees investigate during a Murder Party organized at the Château de Poudenas — Murder Party organized at the Château de Poudenas

c) To allow your employees to unwind while promoting a spirit of competition: the Olympiads

The Olympiads bring teams together around fun challenges, where victory depends on collaboration, not individual performance. Thus, when it comes to encouraging self-improvement and escaping the work environment, the Olympiads become the best choice for outdoor team building.

The point? To show your employees that team spirit is key, and that it is the talents of each person that allow victory to be achieved. The olympiads restore the importance of each team member by putting everyone on an equal footing. Unity is strength! It is also an opportunity to prove to everyone that they are capable of a lot, in disciplines that sometimes require unsuspected talents: whether it is skill, dexterity, strength, patience, reflexes, or even drawing!

At the Château de Poudenas, we regularly host olympiads: our fully adaptable outdoor spaces allow for imagining the most improbable scenographies. Giant foosball in the moats, Pictionary with boxing gloves by the pool, or even archery on skittles on the north esplanade... Everything is possible!

d) To learn while having fun: educational team-buildings

A so-called "educational" team-building is used to strengthen team cohesion while providing information and raising awareness on more specific objectives: ecology, privacy protection, knowledge of heritage...

Often custom-made, these team-buildings are no less interesting than the others: through gamification, the informative aspect fits perfectly within the activity, which remains fun for the participants. It can then take several forms, depending on the subject discussed and the company's needs.

At the Château de Poudenas, we offer activities developed by experts on various CSR topics. Among them, Juliette Sirand, a nature facilitator, offers companies a “climate disorder” quiz: a team game in the style of the television game show “Burger Quiz”, ideal for raising awareness of climate change and its consequences, while having fun!