A scavenger hunt is a game in which players compete against each other to collect the most items off a predetermined list in a specific location. At 212Quest, we’ve done countless creative and customized corporate scavenger hunts as part of team-building activities, and guess what? Employees loved them soooo much! Apart from being fun and engaging, these hunts help workers develop major soft skills that are useful in the work environment. Other benefits of corporate scavenger hunts include:

• Communication: Quality communication throughout an organization can easily help employees achieve organizational goals. With scavenger hunts, groups will learn how to communicate effectively with one another in order to achieve their goals and win the game easily. This benefit will help boost the quality of communication throughout your organization.

• Team Work: Corporate scavenger hunts foster teamwork. Naturally, there are certain members of an organization that prefer to act as lone wolves and carry out minimum interaction with their colleagues. This attitude can be a major turn-off in the workplace. But by using scavenger hunts, you can bring everybody into unity and encourage teamwork since players have to work together to collect items and win the game. Through scavenger hunts, employees also learn the value of collaborating on projects.

• Encourage Creative And Outside the Box Thinking: From answering tricky questions that lead to amazing discoveries to collecting objects, finding hidden clues, or solving riddles, scavenger hunts challenge players to use creative thinking to solve problems. This outside-the-box thinking can be easily applied to the business world where problems need extraordinary solutions.

• Time Management: Are your employees always falling behind schedule and not completing tasks within the set time frame? Then, it is time for a corporate scavenger hunt. Apart from improving collaboration and boosting morale, scavenger hunts also help employees learn time management. In every hunt, there is an allocated time frame between 2-4 hours where teammates have to find and collect items. And any team that collects the most items within the time-frame becomes the winner. This means that teammates have to maximize their time or even break into smaller teams to complete the challenges. This time management skill can be directly transferred to the workplace to help them complete organizational goals at the appropriate time.

• Bonding: Scavenger hunts are fun and great ways for your employees to bond and know each other better – both on a professional and personal level. Through this game, you can create an office culture where employees can interact with each other without awkward silence, help each other succeed, and build great relationships that transcend the workplace.

1. The Longer, The Merrier: Coming up with a list and hunting guide is pretty much the hardest part of creating a DIY corporate scavenger hunt. You might be tempted to go for a shorter list because you don’t want a boring game or you are too tired to think of more things to add. But there is no fun in having a short list that can be completed quickly. So our advice – go for a longer list. Consider adding harder items that might involve meeting random people on the street, entering public transport, taking photos, and reward them with higher points. This will definitely add to the fun.

2. Team Up: Corporate scavenger hunts are merrier when done in a team of people than individually. So split the employees into a group of 6+ people and let them compete against other teams to win the prize.

3. Take Photos: Taking photos of items or things that encourage group participation is another way to add spice to your corporate scavenger hunt. So allow teammates to take pictures of places, employee’s shoes, offices, the coffee shop or just smiling employee’s faces – this will surely make a good scrapbook or slide show for any office party.

4. Add A Prize: Things are more exciting and engaging when there are prizes to be won. Prizes like a free team lunch, a $20 gift card, or any random gift you can think of will add more fun to the game. Just remember to give gifts that can be easily shared amongst players in a team.

5. Have Fun: Scavenger hunts are for fun. So get messy and enjoy yourself to the fullest!

Contrary to popular beliefs, scavenger hunts are not just kid’s games. They can also be used as a team-building activity to encourage cooperation and fun amongst employees. And if you’re unable to organize one by yourself, you can always contact 212Quest for the right scavenger hunt activity for your group.