15 Indoor Team Building Games Your Employees Will Love

A team building event hosting is always encouraged for each organisation – it serves as a great tool to bridge the gaps within teams, departments, inter-departments and finally, the whole company.

Not only does a team building activity helps everyone to understand their colleagues better in terms of strengths and weaknesses, but it also improves team collaboration on working towards a shared goal.

Indoor Team Building Games or Outdoor Team Building?

Both indoor team building and outdoor team building have their own upsides and downsides. Indoor team building activities are easier to control since they are done inside the building where everyone is gathered at one place, but they may be boring and not as inspiring in terms of the ambience. Outdoor team building is more exciting since people are always on the go to work on their activities in a non-office environment but you will need plenty of prior arrangements to ensure everything goes smoothly that day.

Choosing the type of team building depends on your company’s objective – if you are looking at an event that requires more brain than brawn, then indoor team building is perfect for your cause!

To spice things up for your indoor team building, here’s a list of 15 indoor team building games your employees will love (because they don’t have to move so much anyway):

1. The Barter Puzzle

You may know about jigsaw puzzle games but have you ever played them by bartering for pieces between teams to complete your jigsaw? Well, now you can!

How the game works: Divide everyone into a few groups. Each group will be given a different set of jigsaw puzzle of the same difficulty level. The fastest group to complete the jigsaw wins.

The catch is that some of the puzzle pieces are mixed with other groups puzzle pieces. Each team will have to think of ways to negotiate for the pieces back – trading pieces, exchanging members, whatever that works – but it has to be a group consensus, not individual decision.

2. 3 Truths and a Lie

This is one of the simple team building indoor games for employees to execute with little to no equipment needed yet allows employees to get to know one another better. All you need to do is to have everyone settled into groups of 3 or more.

How the game works: Each person will take turns stating 4 facts about himself or herself, whereby 3 of them are truths and 1 is a lie masked as though it is a truth.

Members within the group will then take turns to guess which one is the lie from the 4 facts. The right answer is revealed after everyone has done guessing.

3. Scavenger Hunt

Get your employees exercising (a bit) with this game that requires little resources but a lot of cooperation within a team and even between teams!

How this game works: Divide into groups and have each group hunt for a set list of items that are hidden within the building. The fastest group that discovers all items in the given list within a set time wins!

You can also increase the games fun and difficulty by throwing in some creative riddles and clues in the game.

4. Big Foot

Test communication and critical thinking skills with this simple yet tricky team building indoor games for employees!

How this game works: Big Foot’s concept is simple – all participants will be blindfolded and left to rearrange themselves in a line according to their shoe size, from smallest to largest.

As they cannot rely on their sense of sight nor are they allowed to ask for shoe size verbally, they now have to work via other means of communication. Challenging as it may be, but definitely fun for team building!

5. Zombie Escape

Zombie Escape may sound too gruesome to handle, but trust us, this game is one of the best indoor team building activities.

How this game works: Set a dimly lit room as the game room decorated with scary horror decors, and have one team locked inside there. Play some eery music to get the creepy environment right – the whole setup helps to recreate a scene of a zombie apocalypse. The team is supposed to work together to find the key in the room to unlock the door to freedom.

This game tests participants ability to think calmly and clearly, and coming up with solutions to solve the issue at hand while facing an unpleasant scenario.

6. Who Am I?

No, this is not about asking your colleagues about their names – Who Am I is a label game that gives employees some food for thought about common fixed perception on certain stereotypes and serves as a good icebreaker game.

How the game works: Participants write down a name of a famous figure or people from certain class or category, for example, Doctor, The Blind, Lazy, Authoritative etc., before placing the label onto one persona’s back. The tagged person will not be able to see his or her identity but everyone else can.

Each person will be asking questions around to figure out their identity, while others will regard them based on stereotypes according to their labels. Those tagged will have to use the answers and treatments received to correctly uncover their labelled identities before they can leave the game.

7. Create your Board Game!

You may have played a board game or two before but how about creating a board game with your own set of designs and rules as part of creative indoor team building games?

How the game works: Set up groups and provide them with basic and limited office supplies such as cardboard, paper clips and coloured markers to make their business board game. Teams can add questions or conditions where players can gain or lose points or game currency to make their board game more interesting.

8. Paper Plane Contest

Indoor team building activities such as this paper plane construction may seem simple but it requires creativity, teamwork and some strategic planning to make things work.

How this game works: Make groups and provide each group with the same amount of materials to make their paper planes, such as cards or stock paper, markers, rulers and tapes. Various plane designs can be shown to them for some ideas. Allow them some time to complete their planes before testing the planes flight skill – the group with a paper plane that flies the farthest wins.

9. Minefield

Do your co-workers practise active listening and trust one another enough to succeed together as a team? You will know from this sort of interesting indoor team building games!

How this game works: Set up an enclosed section for the game, mark the start line and finish line, then scatter several objects for picking up and some blank papers as the mines Participants will be divided into groups, where one of them will be blindfolded while the others will instruct the blindfolded person to navigate away from mines while picking up key objects along the way.

10. Flip it Over

Looking for a team building indoor games for employees that challenge not only the aspects of team collaboration but also critical thinking in solving a problem at hand? Then Flip It Over is the game for you!

How this game works: Group everyone into teams of 6 to 8 members. Have each team stand on a large towel, blanket or piece of cloth but leave a portion of the cloth empty. Ask the team to flip over the cloth so that members end up standing on the flip side, without any of their feet touching the ground or getting off the cloth.

11. Egg Drop

What other uses can you think with eggs? Play the (potentially messy) Egg Drop game with your co-workers!

How this game works: Make employees work together as a team to build an egg carrier or holder that can withstand a two-storey drop (or more) while keeping the whole egg intact. Provide each team with materials such as straws, newspapers, rubber bands, balloons, adhesives and plastics. The team that successfully builds the best egg protector wins!

12. Salt and Pepper

Indoor team building activities such as this tests employees capabilities to ask the right questions in order to achieve their goals.

How this game works: Create pair words of opposites such as Yin-Yang, Salt-Pepper, Black-White, Front-Back, Bread-Butter, Day-Night, whereby each opposite word is written on separate papers. The participants will be labelled with a word at the back and their goal is to find their opposite word partner only through yes or no questions.

13. Blind Drawing

Combining the aspects of active listening, imagination and effective partner work communication, Blind Drawing is a simple yet fun and quite challenging as part of indoor team building games you can host.

How this game works: Have 2 participants sit back-to-back. One of them will be given an image or a word, and this person will have to describe it without using words that give away the image or word. The other person will have to draw based on their partner’s description and personal interpretation of the possible image or word.

14. Tower of Hanoi

How about some Maths and problem solving for team building? Tower of Hanoi is one of the perfect indoor team building games to challenge your co-workers thinking power.

How this game works: Divide employees into groups with a set of Tower of Hanoi puzzle and put their critical thinking to test in moving a stack of tower discs which are arranged from biggest to smallest disc at the top to another rod. The catch is that the disc arrangement has to be maintained, only one upper disc can be moved at a time, and the bigger disc cannot be stacked on top of the smaller disc.

15. Pencil Drop

If you are looking for an amusing game that also exercises team coordination on a one-on-one basis, this is the game for you!

How this game works: Prepare empty water bottles on the floor and pencils by tying the pencil end with the ends of 2 strings. The open ends will be tied to the waist of your co-workers who are divided into pairs, with their backs facing one another. Participants will have to move back to lower down their pencil into the empty water bottle without the use of hands.

Need a helping hand in planning and organising your company’s team building indoor games for employees? Our team at Yes Travel is more than happy to assist you!

We provide team building game services customisable to suit your organisations needs. We also have in-house instructors who are experienced, fun people to facilitate your team building event.

That’s a wrap on the 15 indoor team building games your employees will love! If you find this article helpful and inspiring, help us like, share and comment on this page!

Looking for some game ideas for your company annual dinner instead? You can check out our 10 Company Annual Dinner Games article for inspiration!