The team that plays together stays together! We’ve all been on our fair share of business bonding excursions, from bowling, happy hours or your typical lunch out. Spending time with your coworkers that isn’t work per se is super important, but it can be difficult to come up with creative, affordable activities all the time. Here are three alternative ideas that are simple to pull off and easy on the budget for those times when you want to have fun together without breaking the bank.
1. Send Notes of Gratitude
Gather your group together with a pile of notecards and pens, and invite everyone to take some time to write letters of thanks to people who have been kind, patient, or inspiring in the past few weeks or months. Tell the person you’re writing to what you’re thankful for and why.
Play some music in the background and offer tasty treats on the table. In between penning your thank you letters, share stories of who you’re grateful to and why with your teammates. It’s quick, simple, and fills everyone participating with gratitude and love.
2. Game Day
Invite everyone to bring their favorite board game or card game into the office, and spend half a day playing games. Form teams, set up a tournament, and give prizes for achievement and participation. This idea is super simple, requires minimal set up and clean up, and it’ll create stories you’ll be retelling in the lunchroom for months to come.
3. Themed Potluck
Have you ever noticed that every food you can think of has a national day marked in its honor? National Pizza Day, National Guacamole Day, National Pie Day — pick one that speaks to you, and invite everyone to bring a dish featuring that food for lunch. Have fun with it! For National Donut Day, invite everyone to bring in sweet treats from their favorite donut store and then have a blind-taste test and score each entry. The person to bring in the most popular donuts wins a prize!