Build Employee Engagement With These 5 Office Games

Of course we at FireFly love playing games.  We take every opportunity to play-test new challenges we offer on events.  Games are more than fun, they are a valuable engagement tool.  According to a Linkedin study, 46% of workplace professionals report that having a good friend at work is important to their overall happiness.  Now, we’re not saying all your coworkers need to be BFFs, but engaging in friendly activities like office games can actually increase creativity and retention.  When choosing a game to introduce to your office consider staff personalities, afforded time, and resources so that you can pick something best suited to your office.  Here’s five ideas to get you started.

1. Office Games DIY: Mad Libs

Feel free to keep things simple with this idea.  In a common area have staff list random verbs, nouns and adjectives that you feed into an office Mad Lib.  At the end of the day or week, type it up and display it in the break room.  Staff will get a chuckle and will want to offer different suggestions the next time.  These are great entry level office games for employees who may not want to commit to something more involved.  

2.  You Think You Know Me conversation cards

We backed this conversational card game on Kickstarter because we loved how it gave players the chance to strengthen connections beyond what’s on their Twitter feed while still being fun and playful. Players draw a card with a prompt like “I know you wish you could write an episode of:____”.  They pick another player to read it to and guess how that person would answer for themselves.  The questions are meant to lead to conversations and a stronger awareness of those around us.  Consider playing a round or two during your weekly team meetings.  

3. Office D&D campaign

Not for the faint of heart, but perfect for small offices that aren’t afraid to geek out.  Dungeons and Dragons is a great game for coworkers to play. It requires cooperation, planning, creative problem solving and conflict resolution.  If you haven’t played or seen it on Stranger Things, Dungeons and Dragons involves a storyteller called a Dungeon Master. The storyteller describes situations the players, portraying a group of heroes, find themselves in.  Players choose how to respond to each situation. In fact, they employ strategy and roll dice to determine how successful their plan is.  If you don’t have the confidence or know-how to act as Dungeon Master, you can hire an experienced game master to run a singular adventure or ongoing storyline for your office game.  

4. Forbidden Desert (and other collaborative board games)

Collaborative board games are having a huge rise in popularity recently.  In these games players work together to accomplish a goal and beat the game.  My favorite of these is Forbidden Desert.  In this game players are each given a role that allows them one special ability.  This causes each player to be essential for their unique talent. Most of all, we think this is a nice allegory for the work place.

5. Sneaky Cards

Finally in what may be my favorite holiday stocking stuffer game ever, Sneaky Cards consist of a series of challenges meant to be stealthily completed.  The challenges are evergreen so when one is completed the card is handed to the target who can then attempt it.  This makes it great to play at the office because it doesn’t require everyone to focus on it at the same time.  In fact, the game works better when left to the periphery of memory so that players can be more sneaky!  

Whatever games work best for your team we hope you take the time and allow yourselves to have fun with them.  We spend too much time at work to be bored!