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12 Cool  Collaborative Team Building Activities for 20 Employees

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By Preethi Jathanna

Senior Writer for HR and Remote Work

12 Cool  Collaborative Team Building Activities for 20 Employees

Finding an effective way to bring your staff together can be a brainstoming challenge, particularly if you’re on the hunt for interesting team building activities for 20 employees. Groups of this size are often awkward to cater to, as they are too many for small and intimate events but too few for large and gregarious gatherings.

To help you out of this quandary, we’ve put together a great mix of 12 ideas that are well-suited to a team of around 20. There’s something to suit a spectrum of objectives, from pure social bonding to communication-focused gameplay, so that you can entertain and educate at the same time.

1. Why Are Team Building Activities Essential for Employees?

Why Are Team-building Activities Essential for Employees?

Team building activities nurture the relationships between colleagues, improving their ability to communicate effectively and collaborate to achieve project goals. They can create a more positive work environment for people to work in, while simultaneously developing useful soft skills that benefit the individual, the team, and the company.

2. Top Team Building Activities for 20 Employees

2.1. Virtual Trivia 

Virtual Trivia 

Get ready to battle your wits with fellow brainiacs by joining the Virtual Trivia by Hooray Teams, an awesome platform for fun team-bonding activities. You and your team can choose from a variety of trivia themes such as Christmas, "The Office" or pop culture based on your preferences and interests. 

A dedicated professional will host the trivia and make the entire event engaging from start to finish. What’s more interesting is that they can customize trivia questions based on your company, industry, celebrations, corporate events, or any other topic of your choice. 

2.2. Murder Mystery

Murder Mystery

Put your team's inner detective skills to the test with Hooray Teams Virtual Murder Mystery game. You and your colleagues have to team up to interrogate suspects and figure out whodunit before the clock runs out. We played Murder at the Manor and it was an absolute blast. Their lively host helped us to interrogate suspects, share clues and collaborate together to unravel the culprit. 

If you want to exercise problem-solving skills and have a lot of laughs, we recommend trying Hooray Teams Pirates of Cutlass Cove, Who Killed Papa Roni?, Murder! Beside the Seaside, Murder! in Hollywood

2.3. Escape Room

Escape Room

Team up and solve your way out of Hooray Teams Virtual Escape Room before time is up. There is a professional host to help you with solving mind-boggling puzzles and codes to get out of the room in less than an hour. 

You and your crew can choose from a variety of themes such as  The Alchemist, Patient 360, Dungeon Things, Mafia 360 for a funfilled yet adventurous escapade.The best part is you don't need extra setup – just click the meeting link, turn ON your video and microphone, and Hooray Teams will take it from there. 

2.4. Team Potluck

If your goal is to promote camaraderie, potlucks are one of the best team building activities for 20 employees in the workplace. They provide an opportunity for staff to chat and mingle over that greatest of all conversation starters: food.

To give the occasion a bit of structure, set a theme beforehand. This can be something as simple as asking each person to bring their signature dish, or you can go for more specific motifs like childhood favorites, salad bar, or a specific international cuisine.

The key to a successful office potluck is to consult with people beforehand so you know what they plan to bring. The last thing you want is five variations of the same recipe – unless the theme is chili cookoff! Similarly, it can be useful to assign people a type of course, such as appetizer, main, side, or dessert, so that the spread has a mix of sweet and savory.

Although potlucks can be expanded as much as needed, around 20 people is a good number for circulation and socialization. Very large groups tend to be harder to manage in terms of keeping track of who’s bringing what.

2.5. Office Olympics

Office Olympics

Office Olympics turns the banal, everyday work environment into a sporting arena. Composed of multiple challenges, the games promote a cooperative spirit that can translate into more effective collaboration on project targets.

Begin by preparing multiple 5-minute team building activities for 20 employees. These could include things like paper airplane contests, speed typing duels, and desk chair races. Ideally, you want to have at least 5 different ‘sports/ Aside from giving everybody a chance to participate, this also encourages analytical discussion over strengths and weaknesses as part of deciding who should be submitted for each activity.

Keep track of how everybody fares throughout the Office Olympics, so that you can award gold, silver, and bronze medals at the end to the teams who perform the best. For a bit of added fun, arrange gift vouchers or other small prizes to hand out to the most successful group.

2.6. Board Games

Board games are excellent for creating a sociable, entertaining team environment where staff can get to know each other better while also activating their cognitive skills.

There are several that are designed for larger groups. For instance, What Do You Meme can be played by up to 20 people and involves matching caption cards to photos of popular internet memes. The Metagame, meanwhile, is good for sparking discussions, as staff has to debate the answer to a question, such as: “What is responsible for the fraying of our moral fabric?” Players can only answer using one of their assigned culture cards, forcing them to defend sometimes silly responses with cunning arguments.

Instead of having everybody play one board game all together, another idea is to arrange several fast-paced games for smaller groups. In this way, staff can spend 10 to 15 minutes with one set of 4 or 5 people, before everyone is mixed around to play a different game with a different set of people. Games like Codenames and Exploding Kittens, for example, are amusing, strategic diversions that don’t tend to last particularly long, so that you can fit multiple games into an hour or 90-minute session.  

2.7. Scavenger Hunts

Scavenger hunts are one of the most adaptable team building activities for 20 employees. They can be online or in person, in an office or in a city center, with cryptic clues or straightforward checklists.

One of the simplest ways to host a scavenger hunt is to come up with items that need to be found. For example, the scavenger hunt could include prompts like “find something red” or “take a picture of a sculpture.” 

Another popular style of scavenger hunt is a location-based game, where staff must track pinpoint buildings or landmarks. Once they arrive at the correct place, the clue for the next location is triggered. This can be done in the real world or virtuallyusing pin-dropping technology. You can upgrade the experience using a purpose-built app like Scavify or TurfHunt, which allow companies to build their own routes, incorporate multimedia elements, and add gamification elements to the activity. 

2.8. Outdoor Adventure

Hosting team building activities outdoor is a way to refresh staff, taking them out of the humdrum world of the workplace and into a stimulating new environment. 

Something as simple as a team hike promotes physical activity and can form part of a company’s wellness initiatives, while at the same time creating a setting where employees can get to know one another without the specter of deadlines or daily office tasks looming over them. Websites like AllTrails and Komoot make it easy to come up with routes wherever you are located.

For something that more actively fosters team bonding, organize a sports day with games like tug-of-war and three-legged races. You can also go more adventurous by booking a kayaking trip down a river or a few hours at a tree-top ziplining facility.

2.9. Community Services

Consider holding corporate team building activities for 20 employees that give back to the community. There are lots of different ways to achieve this, from the classic bake sale to clothing donation drives.

A good team building charity initiative is to arrange for staff to volunteer at a nearby nursing home, food bank, or homeless shelter. Alternatively, focus on saving the environment through tree planting or picking up trash in local parks or the beach. These kinds of shared experiences nurture stronger relationships between staff, who become closer through feeling that they are working towards a worthwhile common cause.

2.10. Art Jamming Session

Art Jamming Session

There are all kinds of creative team building activities for 20 employees, but art jamming is specifically about making a collaborative painting, collage, or mosaic. These projects strengthen the esprit de corps, while also stimulating creativity and communication related to planning and assembling the artwork.

To get started, decide on what you want to create. It could be an origami paper crane mobile, a mosaic made from recycled bottle caps, or something festive like a Christmas tree composed of individually decorated triangles. The ideas are endless!

Make sure to supply all the necessary paints, paper, or other craft materials that people will require. This is easier to do in an office or other real-world setting, but it’s also feasible to manage in a remote setting with a bit of forethought, using items that everybody will have at home or that can be easily delivered through the post.

2.11. Yoga Sessions

Gathering employees together for yoga classes creates a shared experience that can indirectly benefit team dynamics. Yoga and similar pursuits like meditation classes work well as team building activities for small groups or large groups. There’s really no limit to how many people can take part in these kinds of exercise sessions, though capping the numbers at 20 means there’s you have a manageable group size and get more personalized instructions. It's also easy to organize virtual yoga sessions using video conferencing tools.

Aside from being a soothing way for staff to build bonds, yoga benefits physical and mental health in numerous ways, such as improving fitness and reducing stress. It’s also associated with improved concentration and performance in the workplace.

2.12. Improv Workshops

When you think of improv, you probably think of comedy theater troupes or TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway? The techniques used in these situations can be applied very effectively to the workplace, empowering staff to feel more comfortable communicating and thinking on their feet.

There are several quick team building activities, such as “fortunately, unfortunately”, where players sit in a circle and have to alternate positive and negative elements of a storyline by building on what the person before them has said. For example, the initial sentence might be, “Fortunately, there was no traffic on the road today,” which might prompt the next person to say, “Unfortunately, my car wouldn’t start.” The improv can also become more immersive and focus more closely on specific work situations, such as getting staff to sell a made-up product to a skeptical panel of their peers.

These games often work well with 20 people because everybody gets a chance to participate, but they also have some downtime where they can observe how their peers behave and react, making for fertile ground for discussion.

3. FAQs

3.1. What can you do with 20 people?

There are lots of paid and free team building activities for 20 employees that companies can implement, including exercise classes, collaborative art projects, and skills-based games that promote useful character attributes for the workplace.

3.2. What is the 30 second game for team building?

The 30 second game is a rapid-fire activity that centers on colleagues getting to know one another better. Give everyone some time to think about their happiest memories, then ask each participant to describe the favorite 30 seconds of their lives that they would relive if they could.

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