Today’s team building activities are vitally important for corporate groups because they are serious business. Professional team building programs increase employee engagement and retention while enhancing crucial people skills like collaboration, communication, and problem-solving.
When used as part of employee onboarding, they help make new employees more productive, faster.
Team building events happen every day, across the country, indoors, outdoors, even online. But one popular team building destination with unique appeal is San Francisco. Visitors are drawn from the Bay Area and across the country by its iconic landmarks and diverse range of event venues, from historic buildings to cutting-edge conference centers to quirky, unique spaces.
San Francisco’s Potential for Team Building Events
San Francisco is famous for landmarks and attractions like the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz, and the Presidio, as well its iconic cable cars and zoo. Its temperate climate, cultural variety, and unique appeal make it one of North America’s top 25 event destinations.
Whether traveling from across one of the city’s bridges or across the country, corporate groups can choose from a wide variety of team building activities in San Francisco, from a City SmartHunt® that takes in the city’s unique landmarks to a team building program like Bridge to the Future in a city known for its bridges to a charitable corporate social responsibility (CSR) event like Build-a-Guitar®, where—who knows?!—you may end up donating an instrument to the next Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, or Bonnie Raitt.
Best Corporate Events: Your San Francisco Team Building Event Partner
To organize a successful team building event, you need the right partner. Best Corporate Events is a leading provider of team building activities in the Bay Area for many reasons, including its expert facilitators, proven track record, and more than one thousand 5-Star reviews.
Whatever the goal of your team bonding event in San Francisco, Best Corporate Events has a program that will fit (or can even be customized). With more than 130 team-building options adaptable for in-person, remote, or hybrid events, Best Corporate Events offers a solution for every need.
What San Francisco Team Building Events Are Best for Your Organization?
1. Explore San Francisco with a Team Scavenger Hunt
Combining fun challenges, time management, and corporate team building, a City SmartHunt in San Francisco can be tailored to provide a unique experience as your team explores iconic landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square, the Embarcadero, and Chinatown.
Your teams will use iPad® devices and our SmartHunts® app to navigate their route, solve clues, capture photos and video, and complete challenges. Teamwork is essential, and these hunts provide roles for every team member.
Participants sharpen their problem-solving, communication, collaboration, and time-management skills while uncovering hidden gems and bonding as a team exploring the vibrant streets of San Francisco.
2. Compete in Fast-Paced Tabletop Games
Action-packed tabletop games are a fun, popular competition and bonding option that can fit into almost any San Francisco meeting space (even outdoors!—weather permitting).
These activities build teamwork, collaboration, and camaraderie through friendly competition to finish on top. One great example is A Minute 2 Win It! Teams experience the high-energy atmosphere or fast-paced tabletop challenges against the backdrop of San Francisco’s dynamic energy as they race through a series of contests using common household items and office supplies.
3. Work Together in Interactive Team Building Training
Taking employees out of their daily routine to collaborate and compete in unfamiliar tests that level the playing field teaches them communication and problem-solving skills they can apply in the workplace. It also gives them a new perspective when they return to their familiar business challenges.
For example, Igniting Team Performance® combines team building with professional development. Teams progress through a series of progressively difficult trials designed to enhance goal-setting, leadership, time management, and communication skills. Immediate “debriefs” at the end of each activity acknowledge what worked well while reinforcing a culture and mindset of continuous improvement.
4. Connect with Your Team through Speed Networking
Strengthen team member bonds and open communication through fun, challenging icebreaker activities in our interactive Speed Networking event, set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s bustling city. Provide maximum networking activities for new employees, people who often work remotely, and team members from different locations as teams rotate through small table group discussions.
Participants form new relationships and build connections, leading to more productive workplace interactions in this lively and engaging San Francisco team building activity.
5. Let the Golden Gate Bridge Inspire Teamwork
In our fun, highly collaborative Bridge to the Future program, referenced earlier, teams build sections of a bridge using only cardboard and duct tape, which they then must assemble into a structure capable of supporting the weight of the entire group!
Work as teams with the Golden Gate Bridge as your San Francisco inspiration for this event. You can even use it as the backdrop, as this program works well outdoors (weather permitting) and in large indoor spaces.
6. Host a Team Competition Event
Competition comes naturally to most people and is integral to many team bonding activities. But collaboration is also vital to developing and maintaining a high-performance workplace culture. What if there were a way to combine both in one event?
That’s at the core of the Competition to Collaboration® program. Start by forming two teams from your overall group. The two teams go into separate rooms, each working on different challenges. But at “half time” of the event, an interesting twist is thrown into the mix, reinforcing the vital nature of collaboration.
7. Become Puzzle-Solving Detectives
Solving mysteries and puzzles is another fun and effective team building activity that can be held in virtually any San Francisco venue.
In a team building activity like Crack the Case!®, participants take on the role of detective trainees, working together in teams to solve a series of riddles and challenges that test creative thinking, ingenuity, problem-solving, and deductive reasoning. Ultimately, the group must solve the entire set of puzzles to crack the case and prove their skill as detectives.
8. Create Your Own “Go Kart” Race
Combine the creative opportunities of design with the thrill of racing custom people-powered go-karts! In Go-Kart Competition, teams collaborate to build and race unique creations. Points are awarded for originality, design, creativity, functionality, and, of course, speed.
9. Liven Up Your Corporate Event with a Jeoparody Game
Host a Jeopardy-style game show activity during your San Francisco team building event to energize your team and enjoy friendly competition. Our Jeoparody Live! program includes all the traditional elements of the popular show, from contestant podiums and sound effects to a projection answer board and professional (facilitator) host. It’s a fun, engaging, energizing way to kick off a corporate event or break up a day of meetings.
10. See San Francisco with an Amazing Race-Style Adventure
Put a twist on the traditional corporate scavenger hunt model with an Amazing Race-style competition. We’ll work with you to customize an Amazing Chase SmartHunt® that hits some of the classic San Francisco attractions like Jackson Square, North Beach, and the Marina District.
San Francisco Team Building Events that Give Back to the Community
While all professional team bonding activities help build communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, adding a corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimension takes them to another level. Charitable CSR events in San Francisco, where participants assemble items to benefit local nonprofit organizations, make great team building opportunities for your group.
11. Helping Others While Strengthening Your Team: Build a Wheelchair
Combine team building with community service by assembling wheelchairs for those with mobility issues. In the Best Corporate Events Build-a-Wheelchair® program, your teams will solve knowledge and trivia challenges on iPads to earn the tools and parts required to assemble, test, and decorate wheelchairs for donation to veterans’ groups, care facilities, and other nonprofits serving this population.
12. Build and Donate: Bike Build Donation
Our signature Bike Build Donation® program promotes teamwork, communication, relationship-building, and a sense of purpose by contributing to a worthy cause: kids who need bikes, often their first bike. Whenever possible, a representative from a local charity will join your group to accept and thank your organization for the donation—when feasible, even bringing the children who’ll be receiving the bikes, creating an emotionally powerful experience.
As with virtually all BEST programs, the activity can be scaled up or down to accommodate groups of almost any size. We’ve delivered bike builds to groups as small as 30 people and as big as more than 3,500 in the largest bike build donation in history.
13. Build Teamwork While Promoting Music Education for Youth
Kids are drawn to music, but musical instruments can be expensive. Assembling and donating high-quality guitars to young people whose families may have difficulty affording them is an impactful experience for your teams while making a positive difference.
In our Build-a-Guitar® program, your teams will collaborate to earn the parts needed, then assemble guitars—complete with a tuner, carrying case, audio cable, guitar strap, picks, and even a personal amplifier—for donation to local schools and other nonprofits that promote and provide music education. Or opt for Build-a-Band™ to expand that contribution to include bass guitars and drum sets!
14. Go Golfing for a Cause: Food Donation
Playing mini-golf is a popular employee activity. Designing a mini-golf course and then competing on it with your corporate group is even more engaging.
But what’s BEST is turning all of this into a community service event for a San Francisco area food bank or panty through our Mini-Gold Build and Food Donation event. Your teams will compete first to design creative mini-golf holes using boxed and canned food items, then play the course through every team’s hole. Ultimately, they’ll repackage the food items for donation to a local organization.
15. Go Putting for Pets in San Francisco
For another interesting twist on mini-golf, have your employee teams design mini-golf holes using pet supplies, fostering creativity with a purpose.
In Putting for Pets, teams design a series of unique mini-golf holes using canned and boxed pet food and supplies. Once the course, roles, rules, and shirts have all been designed, teams compete in a tournament. At the end of the event, the pet supplies are re-boxed and donated to a local animal shelter in San Francisco or the Bay Area.
Start Planning Your San Francisco Team Building Events Today
Professional corporate team building activities enhance employee engagement, improve collaboration, and foster creative problem-solving. With its historic landmarks and unique attractions, San Francisco is an appealing and popular destination for team building events for Bay Area companies and enterprises nationwide.
Whether your objective is fun competition or combining the development of people skills with community service, the wide range of programs and expertise offered by Best Corporate Events make us the ideal partner for corporate team building in San Francisco. Discover why we’re the #1 rated choice for team building at BestCorporateEvents.com.
