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Office work can sometimes increase tension and stress among employees. If you are in a small group, of course you can see and feel the effects of high tension from employees and this can affect their performance results. Icebreaker games are needed to reduce employee stress and restore their work focus. Gathering employees to do something fun can be a relief even though their work is full of difficulties or problems. But what are some fun icebreaker activities, games, and ideas for small groups? Read this article until the end. Why do we need icebreaker games? Icebreaker games can build relationships between employees, create a team or organizational culture, relieve stress, reduce tension in the work atmosphere, and make employees re-focus on what they do. Icebreaker activities can be a tool to help participants spend time interacting with coworkers and learning about each other.  12 Best Team Building Events for Work Whatever the current work environment, icebreaker activities are the key to making conditions more comfortable. You can do it during a meeting, before starting work, or before work is over. What is a fun icebreaker activity? Fun icebreaker activity for small groups is any activity that can involve all participants, so that they can interact with each other. Let employees help you in preparing icebreaker activities. Prepare icebreaker ideas using equipment you have purchased previously, or using items you have in the office. Or you can receive suggestions from employees about what icebreaker games they know. If you are still confused about what activities are suitable, you can see some of the best icebreaker activity ideas from us. 15 fun and unique icebreaker games for team Icebreakers for small groups can be made as exciting as possible and provide valuable lessons for all participants. There are many types of games that you can use, such as indoor team building, connection games, small group games, problem solving, etc. Here is the list. Classic riddle Have you ever heard of the classic chicken, wolf, and grain riddle? This riddle is very suitable for icebreakers in small groups. Tell the group about the story: "A farmer was traveling with a chicken, a wolf, and a bag of grain. They had to go through a river to cross. The boat could only accommodate one chair for the farmer and one other piece of luggage. The farmer could not leave the chicken with a bag of grain, or leaving the wolf alone with the chickens. How can farmers get them all across the river?" Team members have to think together about how farmers can move the loads one by one without anything getting lost. Here is the answer for the riddle: The farmer brings the chicken first. The farmer returns to take the wolf, and after crossing the river, the wolf is put down and the chicken is taken back. After returning to the starting point, the farmer put the chicken away and took out a bag of grain. When you cross the river, a wolf will be with a bag of grain. Last step is the farmer retrieve the chicken. Speed networking Speed networking is an activity that makes it easier for teams to know each other. Pair your team into groups of two. Give each pair an icebreaker question, and five minutes to answer as many questions as they like. After five minutes is over, switch up the pairs. After switching up the pair, you can give them time to chat for a while to discuss what questions they had with the previous pair. Because you are doing it with a smaller group, you can cycle through the pairs more than once. This activity will give employees time to chat about some information and how they can answer as many questions as possible. Achievements under 18 This icebreaker activity is very suitable for small groups because each participant must convey what achievements they have had until the age of 18. These accomplishments can range from personal, academic, and hobby. Every employee will remember any moment they have from their childhood, and can lead to questions about personal triumphs. This activity is a fun way to grow each employee's self-confidence again, and a great way to get to know each other. Jenga questions You and your team can play Jenga and also answer questions. Give a number to each piece of Jenga, and write questions according to the sequential number. As each participant successfully draws a brick, they must answer a question. This activity creates an easygoing and spontaneous way for employees to share information about themselves. While they have to stay focused on balancing Jenga blocks, they will also have fun answering the questions that have been prepared. Creativity of a brand manager Ask your team members to imagine themselves opening a business. Each group must decide how they market their new brand. Let the group determine the logos, slogans, and products they choose. Share and vote for which group has the best marketing strategy. This icebreaker game will foster creativity for the team, and you can see several individuals who have good talents in certain fields, and we can know what they are passionate about. Six word memoirs Six word memoirs are a suitable activity for team building and spark discussions. Each team member needs to brainstorm about six words that summarize their life, and they need to share their six word memoir with the group. Each team member needs to choose the right words to explain it to the group. Each six words can be a question and explanation, while we can find out interesting insights about each other. Time heist Have you ever thought about what you would do if you could go back in time? This game is inspired by the events of Avengers Endgame, with time heist as a game for teams in what would pull it off if they could time travel. Ask your team to write down their time travel plans on paper, and place it on an opaque container. Then pass the container around and each team member draws a paper and discusses what is written on the paper. Time heists can provide an amazing way to learn about each other, and how creative they are as a team. The marshmallow challenge The marshmallow challenge is a fun team building game for work. Split your team into pairs and give each group 10 sticks of dry spaghetti, three feet of string, three feet of tape, and one marshmallow. Each pair has 10 minutes to build the tallest structure with the marshmallow on top. This activity requires communication, teamwork, and innovation. After the challenge is complete, you can gather the team and discuss which part of the game is the most difficult, which structure is the best, who failed the first, how they overcame it, and what they think about other designs. 10 things in common Divide your team into pairs and instructions to discover 10 things that they have in common. After the pairs find similarities with their partners, they can switch pairs to find other 10 things in common. This game can speed up the time in finding out about each other, as well as what things they like together to add excitement to the conversation. Who am I? Who am I is a fun game that requires some preparation. Choose some well-known real people, and some fictional characters. Write the individual names on paper and tape a paper to each person's back. Each participant goal is a figure out who they are. They have to ask coworkers to find the answers. Answerers may not mention their names directly, and can only answer yes or no. The game ends when all participants can guess who the name on the paper is. To make the game easier, you can create a theme. For example, you can give a clue to all participants that the theme this time is Hollywood actors. Word association Word association is a quick and easy game to learn how teams think. Make a list of ten words, and you can change the number based on your needs. Next, each participant writes one word through ten on a piece of paper and reads each worn. Let employees think about what sentences come to their minds after listening to all the words from coworkers. After the lists are complete, teammates will share the response to each word. This game is interesting because we can understand how employees make connections and their logic. Superhero wars Divide the room into two to four people per team. Every person must choose one superhero, such as Iron Man, Katniss, Gandalf, and take on their powers. Teams now go to battle verbally. You can see how excited they are to defend their superheroes to keep winning, while the creativity of each employee creates good stories. The group leader decides which superhero team wins the war. Talent show Every employee has the opportunity to show their talents in front of coworkers. The talents might be anything, starting from singing, card tricks, stand up comedy, or teaching new skills. The more random, the better icebreaker will be. Song scramble This is a unique game that can be played for small groups. Each participant will choose a song they like and sing it, then they stop suddenly at one word, and appoint a coworker to continue the word with a song of their own choice. Continue the game until there are only two players left who can continue one word to the new song. Would you rather The group leader points to one of the participants and asks a question such as "would you rather eat at the restaurant or fine dining at the hotel?" After answering the question, that person points to other participants and asks the next question. Let each participant prepare fun questions, so that the office atmosphere becomes cheerful and lots of conversations go on. Icebreaker games, activities and ideas are needed to help employees reduce stress, tension, restore focus, or prepare before they start work or meetings. Icebreaker activities for small groups can be a means to strengthen relationships with coworkers and create a positive culture in the organization.   If you need other information about advancing your business through team building, leadership skills, or problem solving, you can check our site. SMEBrother has all the important tips for advancing businesses from small to medium scale. Check the website out to get lots of important information about finances, licensing, or ways to take your business to the next level.

Monitoring the team's performance and keeping them motivated and in high morale is quite a difficult task. But, it would be more difficult if we had a virtual team that worked remotely most of the time. We have to think about how to build virtual teams to focus on the same goals, and bond with coworkers even though they work in different places. We have collected several virtual team building activities that you can use to strengthen virtual team collaboration. How do you keep a virtual team motivated? There are several factors to ensure your team stays motivated. For employees who work in the office, it will be easier, because you can meet them directly, ask what they need, ask if there are any particular difficulties, and keep them focused on tackling challenges in no time. But it's different from a virtual team, because we have to ask questions via video call or chat, and can only discuss more during meetings. Several important factors to keep virtual teams motivated are providing them with the right tools, using surveys to gauge motivation, talking about adaptive performance, virtual team building and employee recognition. How do you plan a virtual team building? It might seem overwhelming to gather a virtual team to do team building. But don't worry, we will give you some simple steps to plan virtual team building activities. It might seem overwhelming to gather a virtual team to do team building. But don't worry, we will give you some simple steps to plan virtual team building activities. First, prepare time for a virtual team building event. Notify all virtual employees to be present with a note in the group chat, or email them personally. Second, decide what kind of activities you want to do for team building. Don't forget to have fun while strengthening communication with each other, especially looking for activities that can boost employees' morale. Top Ways To Improve Employee Productivity Third, if you still can't determine what activities are interesting for your employees, make a survey about what events are suitable for groups to see their excitement about team building activities. 14 virtual team building activities for remote employees Let's take a look at some online team games & activities to boost their morale, communication, and potential for collaboration. If we missed any favorite activities that you usually do with coworkers, please let us know by commenting below. Virtual team challenges The virtual team challenge is to create a team from several random employees, completing several games in fun and unique ways. These challenges may include physical activities, puzzles, riddle-solving, trivia knowledge, etc. This is a fun activity because we can understand our team's strengths and weaknesses, and give them the opportunity to do something together virtually while learning about problem solving in the games they play. Holiday themed zoom call One of the interesting team building events is the schedule for Zoom meetings with a holiday theme. Notify all employees to prepare decorations or clothes that match the theme you choose, starting from Halloween, mid-autumn festival, New Years Eve, etc. Don't forget to reward employees with the most unique costumes or decorations. This is a fun activity because you can change the theme according to your wishes. You can hold themed Zoom meetings every time there is a special occasion, and teach the virtual team to be together to always participate in the excitement. Virtual recognition wall Like the wall of fame concept, simply create a wall from social media to send out a message to your team during meetings, as a form of employee recognition for employees who excel. Coworkers can post messages, videos, photos, GIFs, memes, and all the fun ways to convey their support and recognize their peers virtually. Doing interactive activities together Choose several interactive activities like baking parties, art nights, cooking classes, and many more. Let the employee receive a team building kit at their home. All they need to do is bring the box and show up to a virtual meeting while doing a series of activities. This activity can provide a fun experience of doing things together even in different places, while experiencing new things like baking or cooking. Open mic virtual icebreaker Prepare 10 minutes before each meeting starts for one employee to take the virtual stage. Ask them to do something they want, such as reading a poem, singing a song, doing stand up comedy, or playing an instrument. Allow their teammates to snap and applaud after these glorious performances. Dance party Ask each employee to write down their favorite dance songs, then collect the data and prepare some of the songs to play later. During icebreaker time, tell all employees to enjoy the music and allow them to dance, sing along, or laugh together. Take special time to ask the person who entered the song choice, why they chose that song as their most favorite to know the backstory of it. Name that emoji song title This is a fun game that you can do virtually. Determine who goes first, and put a timer for each person to answer the questions. Other team members can only give clues by using only emojis to the title of the song. Everyone else takes turns to guess the song, until time runs out. Reveal the song, and if no one can guess correctly, you can do it for another song title. Department quiz battle Choose two departments that will conduct a trivia battle. Create a list of 10 trivia questions using Google Form. Send out the questions to both departments with time limits. Make 3-4 rooms of trivia, and each team records the answers on digital sheet provided by the host. You can make trivia battles more interesting by displaying answer players, such as whose answer is the funniest? Who answered the fastest? Which department has the highest points? etc. Snapshot virtual icebreaker Ask everyone to take a picture of something, such as pets, kids, desk spaces, outfit, etc. Have everyone upload their pictures and create a digital collage of everyone's snapshots. Spend time to compliments the pics or asking questions about it. Solving problems Divide employees into groups of 3-4 people. Give a case regarding work or real-life problems. Let each group discuss about the case, and give time for each group to express their opinion and how they solved the problem. The interesting thing about this activity is that each group can share their point of view and do problem solving as a group. Virtual comedy show Provide memorable virtual team building by inviting famous stand up comedians in your area to inject a fun and laughter into your team. This is easy to set up, ideal for small teams, and provides relaxation time for employees. A comedy doesn't have to be work related, and tell the talent to craft the comedy as interesting as possible for the time you set. Learning course together For personal development, you can take online courses and watch them together with the team. Giving virtual teams time to learn together with their team is an impressive and useful experience for improving their skills as well as team bonding. GIF wars virtual icebreaker Set the rule for 1-2 minutes per person to reply to a gif from their coworker. Choose a theme for the GIF war each week, like dogs, cats, movies, sports, etc. To make it more interesting, every GIF sent must be relevant or create a story in it. Go around and vote for who can provide the best GIF and can create a story from the GIF wars to keep going. Getting know each other The host will say one of the employees' names. The coworkers are given 1-3 minutes to convey what they know about their coworkers. Do this until everyone has said what they know about, and give time for the chosen one to reveal which one matches what their friend described, and correct it if something isn't right. Do it in a professional way, without blaspheming or demeaning coworkers, as a form of respect for friends.   Virtual teams must still pay attention to their cohesiveness, because it is more difficult for you to form a team when they are in their respective workplaces. By doing team building activities, you can teach the virtual team to stay collaborative and align their goals. If you need other information about how to do team building activities, you can visit the SMEbrother site. We provide a lot of information for your business progress, leadership skills, problem solving for teams, finance, licensing, and much more.

Did you know that there are many benefits you can get when your employees have high morale and motivation? Most business owners focus more on other things, because they think high morale is not something critical for business. Even though many companies are still skeptical about the value of high morale, we need to know what the benefits are of employees with high morale and the value of morale boosters. We have summarized the best list of moral boosting activities and employee engagement ideas for the progress of your business. How do you keep staff morale high and motivate? It all goes to employee engagement. Employees have low morale and high turnover when they do not feel valued, feel pressured, and are uncomfortable with the work environment. You must know how to engage with employees, never tire of motivating them, and give employees time to share their difficulties. The more open you are with your employees, the more you will understand what employees need, and vice versa. Why is Employee Engagement Important? Here's The Reasons Why What improves employee morale and productivity? There are many factors that can improve employee morale and productivity. Employee morale is something that people feel individually and collectively. Some of these factors are leadership, communication, recognition, and work life integration. First, it's about leadership. Employees can work comfortably and more productively if their leaders give clear directions, don't judge them if they make mistakes, can place each employee according to their skills, and guide the employees if they still don't match what they want. Second, it's about communication. Employees who can communicate with their coworkers and leaders will enjoy their workplace more because they feel open to each other, respect each other, and understand what other people are saying. Third, recognition is needed to make employees feel valued and more enthusiastic about improving their performance. Employees whose hard work is never seen do not have a good reason to work productively or achieve goals. Lastly, is work life integration. Employees must be able to feel balance between their lives at work and at home. Don't put too much pressure on employees at work until they spend less time living at home. Because work and life at home must be balanced, so that employees can find peace in both different places. 14 morale boosters ideas for employees and staff After knowing how important the value of morale boosters is, we will give examples of the best morale boosting activities that are suitable for your employees and staff. Express gratitude Gratitude can improve many things such as psychological health, sleep, and lifts mood. But the challenge for companies is how to integrate gratitude to their employees? As a leader, don't be shy about conveying the good performance of your employees. Convey employees' hard work or achievements during meetings, or at the beginning of each week. You can express gratitude personally or in front of the team. Plan events to celebrate a good work with the team after completing a big project, or in the middle of the year. Sometimes an entire team deserves good things from their great contribution to the company. Learn from mistakes Invite the team to have a special time to discuss what failures occurred each week, and what they learned from it. The point is not to call out mistakes, but to understand what is the reference for employees when they make mistakes, and that is a learning process and share how to overcome them. With this activity, employees can feel calm even if they make mistakes, have a healthy relationship with failure, because it's ok to fail and provide employees with opportunities for growth and learning. Provide healthy office snacks Healthy foods can improve employees' morale, because apart from maintaining employee health, mood, spirits and productivity can increase drastically. Preparing healthy office snacks shows that you care about your employees, and you believe that healthy food options from the office can be fuel for employees to work at peak performance. Playing instrumental music Music is one thing that can set the mood, and is a fun way to improve morale in the office. Choose instrumental music, because lyrics can tend to distract. With the right choice of music, it makes repetitive tasks more enjoyable, increases creativity, and improves focus. You don't need to use loud speakers, just a volume that everyone can enjoy quietly. Green space at the office Studies have shown that green space can reduce stress and improve mental health. Place several green plants in small pots on several office tables, or in the office yard and assign employees to care for these plants as a joint task. Giving employees the task of watering the plants every day will reduce absenteeism, and help them manage their time so they don't forget to do it before they work. Provide incentives or awards for employees who have the biggest bloom, greenest thumb, or most beautiful specimen. Personal development Every employee wants to have the opportunity to increase their skills and knowledge in the workplace. It's very common to find employees whose morale declines because they feel there's no room for growth. Give employees opportunities to get personal development, such as taking them to seminars, courses, leadership training, and other development topics. Ask each employee about their individual development plans, and track their records at each meeting to keep them on track towards professional goals. Finishing a book Prepare books about increasing skills, leadership, work ethics, or anything that can improve employees' productivity and skills. Give employees special time to read the book collection in the office, and ask them to summarize several important points after the reading time is up. Creating a habit of reading books is a positive thing, because it gives every employee the opportunity to have special time to learn new things, especially for everyone who feels they don't have time for that. Group fitness Group fitness is a bonding experience while improving employees' overall health and fitness. Exercise can improve mood and cognition. Gathering of employees in group fitness will strengthen personal relationships, doing something fun together outside of work. You don't need to hire a coach, just watch videos on YouTube and do exercises together. Be consistent, do it once a week and see the many benefits you will get. Compliment coworkers Create a special session and gather all employees. Let them sit around, and set the rules. Each employee should appoint one coworker, and compliment them about their strengths, or things they can learn from them. Do this alternately until all employees get the compliment. This activity builds up morale and respect for each employee, and increases each employee's self-confidence. Monday morning coffee Most of workers will say Mondays are a tough day. No matter how much you love your job, the weekends will never be enough. That's why set the first day of the week with Monday morning coffee. Get the team out of the office in a relaxed atmosphere and have a coffee together. Have a directed conversation with employees, and ensure team members can follow up on any conversation. Idea of the week Employees will feel happy if their ideas are heard. Choose one time each week for employees to share their ideas. Choose the best idea for the company's progress, new ideas about projects, saving office costs, or anything that can bring benefits to the office. Celebrate work anniversaries Celebrate the day by throwing a party at the office, while holding an awards event for employees. Choose several categories such as best employee, funniest employee, most dedicated employee, etc. Create several events for team bonding on that day, and focus on employees to express your gratitude for having them in your office. Celebrate significant milestones Employees need a significant amount of time to achieve company milestones, and you as manager or CEO have the right to celebrate their success. Invite your employees to lunch or dinner, while complimenting them on their good work. Motivate them to maintain good performances. Create a wow wall Prepare a special wall to remember things that employees can remember and have a positive impact on the office. Pin positive client feedback, pictures together with employees outside the office, completed projects, and positive affirmations. Every employee who sees the wow wall will be more enthusiastic about achieving another milestone, because they believe their office recognizes their hard work.   Morale boosters are something that many business people don't consider important, but can bring many benefits to the office. Start boosting employee's morale with the methods above, and see what benefits you can feel when you have high morale employees. If you want to get tips for progressing your business, visit the SMEbrother site and get information about licensing, finance, and tips for growing your business to the next level.

Elevate team communication with these 12 engaging and unique communication games. From "Taboo" word guessing to "Freeze Walk" non-verbal challenges, these activities build trust, camaraderie, and emotional intelligence. Strengthen teamwork, enhance problem-solving, and foster a positive workplace culture. Discover more creative ways to improve your business at SMEBrother, your comprehensive resource for business growth, financial insights, and practical tips for success.

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