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Category: Scavenger Hunts

Seven Fun Activities for Bringing Teams Back Together Post-COVID

As vaccination rates rise and COVID cases fall, live business events and meetings are coming back in a big way.

The recent IMEX gathering in Las Vegas drew more than 3,300 meeting professionals for in-person education and networking, and Smart Meetings is reporting that urban venues are seeing the return of group business. Concerts are back.

And according to AdWeek, while virtual and hybrid events are here to stay, “Few believe the limitless audience of a virtual event is worth the in-person trade-off of a live event…What we’re seeing is b-to-b events come back first, (as) it follows the back-to-the-office trend.”

We’ve noted why team building should be a top priority as your employees return to the office or other workplace. You may not have everyone back in the office full time. You may have new employees still getting familiar with your people and operations. At the very least, you may have employees who haven’t physically worked together for a long while.

So, if you are bringing your people together (or back together) and are interested in the value team building can provide as part of that process, you may be wondering: what are some of the specific activities we should consider? And what are the unique benefits of each?

Here are seven fun in-person activities that are great for bringing your team back together in the post-COVID work environment.

Charitable CSR Programs

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs enhance the benefits of team building activities—teaching problem-solving, leadership, communication, and collaboration in a fun, engaging way—with the element of giving back to the community. The result is a powerful, emotional experience that increases employee loyalty and engagement. Here are details on three of the most popular CSR programs.

Bike Build Donation®

This is one of our signature trademarked programs. In February 2018, we delivered the largest bike build in history: 3,500 employees from Lowe’s built and donated 1,058 bicycles at one program in Las Vegas (watch the video here). Our facilitators have been delivering Bike Builds for more than two decades.

We continue to pioneer the future of this charity event with the use of our proprietary apps and Apple iPads®. This worthwhile program incorporates engaging audio/video clues and fun challenges and activities, enabling teams to earn the parts necessary to assemble bikes for children in need.

Mini-Golf Build and Food Donation

This is a fun charity team building program where, working in teams, groups design, construct, and play a mini-golf course using canned and boxed food items. Each hole has a unique theme and rules.

After the course has been built, an entertaining tournament ensues with scoring and friendly competition. Once completed, the course gets deconstructed and the food donated to a predetermined food bank or other charitable organization.

Build-a-Wheelchair®

Build-a-Wheelchair is another trademarked program, an engaging, worthwhile event that benefits wounded American veterans and other people with impaired mobility. Beginning with various iPads® activities to earn the needed materials, teams assemble, safety test, and decorate new wheelchairs for donation. Whenever possible, a representative from the selected charity arrives to accept and thank the group for their donation.

SmartHunts® (High-Tech Scavenger Hunts)

Best Corporate Events’ sister company, SmartHunts, combines mobile app technology with traditional scavenger hunts and games to take these activities to an exciting, engaging, and interactive new level. In addition to testing participants’ knowledge and collaboration skills, SmartHunts are a great way to discover a new campus, museum, or city. Among the most popular of these is the City SmartHunt®.

City SmartHunt

This program is a creative way to experience the essence of your chosen city. Photo missions, video challenges, and trivia questions guide teams on a fun scavenger hunt through monuments, historic sites, and local attractions.

All SmartHunts programs include destination-specific points of interest, fun trivia, pop-culture missions, clues to solve, photo & video missions, GPS mapping system, social media sharing, team tracking, and a live leaderboard with an event slideshow.

Team Building Events

Whether your focus is on strengthening connections and communications within your employee team, professional skills development, enhancing employee engagement and loyalty, or just enjoyable competition, team building events improve trust and performance. Here are three of our most popular programs.

Competition to Collaboration®

This engaging, trademarked training program highlights the positive impacts of organizational synergy, both in sharing best practices and celebrating colleagues’ successes. It begins with two sub-teams completing various challenges separately, attempting to improve their own performance and reaching goals for the other team to beat—then adds a surprise twist that reinforces the message of team collaboration.

A Minute 2 Win It!

As seen on the popular TV game show, and adapted for team play, groups participate in rounds of fast-paced tabletop challenges. The competition heats up as one-minute games are practiced and scored using commonplace items like pencils, plastic cups, and a deck of cards. Teams cheer and have a blast as they vie to be named champions.

Igniting Team Performance Series™

Whether your team is a newly formed group or an existing project team, this dynamic training session will measure your group’s teamwork proficiency, identify areas that need improvement, and deliver activities custom-tailored to those needs.

Fun and fast-paced, participants will engage in increasingly complex challenges, each one preceded by brief yet powerful group discussions. This program is customized to meet your organization’s unique situation and objectives.

Conclusion

With proper safety protocols in place, live events are coming back. People crave togetherness and connection.

In-person team building programs are an investment your company makes in its people that pays off in improved retention and loyalty, greater workplace collaboration, and enhanced interpersonal skills. As offices and other workplaces reopen after COVID, bringing employees together in a fun and productive way is more important than ever.

Escape Room SmartHunt

An escape room is a so-called “game”. It’s an adventure where groups between 8-10 people are “locked” in a room. Players must solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues, hints, and strategy to complete the objective at hand. Players are given a set time limit, usually one hour, to unveil the secret plot which is hidden within the room.

How it began

It all started in 2012 when Swiss physics professor created a scientific escape game for his students. The game was later offered to the public under the name of Adventure Rooms and distributed as a franchise in twenty countries. The Adventure Rooms introduced scientific puzzles to the game and thus Escape Rooms were born. This new craze has really taken off and there are now over 8,000 escape room venues worldwide.

Escape Rooms are now portable!

Best Corporate Events advanced the Escape Room concept and made it high-tech and portable! Teams are assigned iPads loaded with the puzzle challenges. They visit Smart “Stations” and solve the puzzles at each station in order to advance to the next. Similar to Escape Rooms, each completed challenge helps you move on to the next. The only difference between the traditional Escape Room and Best’s Escape SmartHunt® is it allows you to get out and explore! The traditional format of an escape room includes teams of 8-10 people physically “locked” in a room.

They must solve puzzles or challenges including padlocks codes to complete the mission of “getting out”. Much like Escape Rooms, the Escape SmartHunt can contain its own storyline. The storylines were developed to enhance the experience. Rooms can be rated Easy to Very Hard, for those groups looking for a greater challenge. What better way to interact and create memories with your team than the creation of a dramatic experience. Offering just the perfect amount of stress and pressure, individuals are challenged and more inclined to succeed with that small factor of fear in the back of their minds.

Here are the many benefits to completing an escape room with your team.

Teams learn to work together.
They must interact to solve the common goal.
Everyone’s skills are put to use.
Your strengths are magnified when needed.
It’s a perfect activity for groups of any size.
Improve workplace relationships.
Improve productivity in the office.

By adding iPads loaded with the SmartHunts app, teams are presented with a unique and enhanced challenge different than any other escape experience. Now, you can have an escape event delivered for any size group at any meeting venue, in breakout rooms at a hotel, at a resort, or even as a tour around a city! Teams begin their adventure by solving brain teasers to break into a locked container that holds a SmartHunt iPad and all other supplies needed to succeed. Once each team unlocks their container to accesses their iPad, they are free to begin the remaining challenges.

Teams move from location to location and complete a series of escape-themed activity challenges in an effort to earn a key to “escape”. Examples of challenges include clues, puzzles, hidden items, a drone obstacle course, laser mazes, and Nerf® targets, all leading to discovering the secret code which provides the key to the lockbox and their escape. Teams scan QR codes using their iPads to earn points for completing each activity. When all activities are completed, they receive a secret code needed to redeem their key they need to escape!

Can your team complete all the challenges, follow the clues, and find all the stations needed to escape? There is only one way to find out.

Source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-no-puzzle-why-escape-room-adventures-are-so-popular/2015/01/16/938370de-9b4f-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.htmlhttps://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/01/art-escape-room-323150.html

Company Team Pictures

Since the beginning of time people have been involved with taking a team picture. Remember picture day at school? Your parents would dress you in your best attire and made sure your hair was styled perfectly. From your early years to your graduation from high school or college, each year in school was documented and remembered with your yearly picture.

Team pictures began with taking a picture with your childhood extracurricular activities. Whether it be with your first ballet class to your tee ball team. Team pictures have been captured since the beginning. They still continue even after entering your career. Companies often schedule picture day to capture their team as a group. Knowing how much companies love pictures of their team, we’ve developed the easiest and most fun way to do this during our team building programs.

You get all the pictures!

Best Corporate Events offers over 20+ iPad driven programs where your team can capture all the fun they are having at their event. Thanks to the high-tech app we’ve developed, a variety of our programs come with iPad driven technology that is used throughout the event. And best of all, we provide the iPads!

Our iPad app is a combination of sightseeing, gaming, and laughter and can be delivered anywhere in North America. Teams have fun capturing the activities and different challenges. Our ever-popular City SmartHunt® is the perfect event for companies who want their group to explore a fun city. Your group will experience the cool interactive features of our SmartHunts app on Apple® iPads®. The app utilizes text messaging, audio, video, FaceTime®, social media, QR codes, and GPS with built-in mapping to produce the coolest hunts ever! Teams will discover landmarks, parks, and museums all while taking photos and videos during the hunt.

Bike Build Donation® is our most popular charitable team building programs. Teams build bikes for less fortunate kids in the community. It’s also one of our programs that involve iPads where team members can capture all the fun and save the memories for years to come. We now offer two new versions of our famous Bike Build Donation® building bikes for kids of all ages. Tricycles for young children ages 1 to 5 years old and 26” Cruisers for teens ages 13 and up. At the end of the program, companies might capture a team picture with members of the charitable organization who attend the event to accept the donations.

At the conclusion of the event, we will email a link to your company contact that will contain all the team pictures, scores, and videos from your participating teams!

Corporate Events That Give Back

Besides flexible hours, friendly relationships with coworkers, and career growth, the incoming workforce — aka Millennials — want something else when it comes to their job: corporate volunteering opportunities that fulfill their social responsibility.

For instance, in The Millennial Impact Report, they found that 55% of Millennials said that “a company’s support for social causes was an important factor in accepting a job offer.” And that 78% of Millennials “prefer doing cause work in groups, such as company-wide volunteer days or in a team or department-wide projects.” Volunteering during work hours or having employees volunteer skills to the community can engage employees, increase job satisfaction and can boost team spirit and unity.

Below are five corporate charity events where employees can develop team-building skills while helping the community.

1. Bike Build Donation
As one of our top 10 programs at BEST, the Bike Build Donation involves teams participating in challenges and activities that use engaging audio/video clues to earn the parts necessary to assemble the bikes. The bikes are built for local children in need and once built by the team; mechanics inspect the bikes before taking a group picture. If there is additional time, team members can write personal notes of encouragement to the recipients or create decorative bike license plates. The event ends with a local charity representative accepting the donation, whenever possible.

Check out a recent Bike Build Donation event for Lowe’s employees where they built and donated 1,048 bicycles for local Las Vegas Boys and Girls clubs in the community. See it Here

2. Charity Game Show
This team activity utilizes state-of-the-art game show podiums where employees face-off and “buzz in” an answer to questions from topics ranging from geography and science to sports and entertainment. The Charity Game Show offers a projected answer board, microphones and real game-like visuals and sound effects.

At the conclusion of the event, a team member from your group will deliver a giant check, signed by the members of the winning team, to a representative of the charity of your choice.

3. Bears and Blankets
In this corporate event that gives back to the community, employees will solve text, audio and video clues in order to earn points and use these points to choose their bears and the accompany stuffing. The artistic members of your group will also obtain bear-sized t-shirts that they will skillfully design and decorate. Lastly, team members will use their creativity to swaddle the bears with warm, soft blankets.

Once the bears are assembled, they are then delivered to crisis centers and law enforcement agencies where they are given to children who have experienced trauma. Whenever possible, a representative from the organization receiving your gifts will address your group and thank them for their generous donation.

4. Donation Nation Care Packs
Through Apple iPads, teams will solve text, audio, and video clues as well as complete exciting gaming challenges in order to earn points and retrieve contents of the care packages they are building. In addition, a running scorecard is posted to increase the excitement and energy of the event. These care packages will include specific items needed for the chosen charity. Recipient examples include food banks, hospices, nursing homes, homeless shelters, and other community and social service agencies.

Like the other events listed, if possible, a representative from the chosen charity will visit your group and speak about their organization as well as join for the final stages of the care package assembly.

5. Locate and Donate SmartHunt
Using our SmartHunts innovative application, teams will navigate through a customized scavenger hunt to complete text, photo, and video challenges on their Apple iPads to earn points and see if they can complete the challenge.

Along the route, teams will need to find challenge stations where they receive a surprise package if they complete the challenge. Using the puzzle pieces found in all the collected packages, employees will have to complete the puzzle in order to create a large bank check donation to an organization of your choice in any amount you desire.

Furthermore, following the event, your facilitator from BEST will send team members a link that contains all the photos and videos shot by your team during the SmartHunt.

So, if you’re looking for team building activities that successfully give back to the community, consider these five charitable group bonding activities to use at your next corporate event!

How to find the right hunt for your team?

Groups Love a Scavenger Hunt

So your corporate group is on the hunt for a fun and thrilling team building event. You start by browsing through our Top 10 Programs, and two programs catch your eye; Amazing Chase SmartHunt® and City SmartHunt®. Are these scavenger hunts? Are these team building? Well, you are on the right path as they are both a scavenger hunt type of team building! Remember when you were young, and you played games like manhunt, hide and seek, scavenger hunts or Easter egg hunts? Kids love them and so do adults!

Introducing our high-tech team building scavenger hunts for corporate groups. SmartHunts® are a unique combination of sightseeing, adventure, team building challenges and gamification fun your company will love! If your company is hosting their conference in a fun city, whether metropolitan, small and quaint or a beachside town, then a SmartHunt® is the perfect activity for your group to get out and explore their surrounding city while having fun.

Your group will explore local landmarks, learn fun facts and we can even brand the event with your company logo. The SmartHunts® app allows us to customize the questions and content to your company including points of interest, photo, video, and trivia to meet the goals and outcomes for your group.

Just a few of the benefits of a SmartHunt® include:

Encourage team members to build relationships
Improve confidence
Improve communication
Educate while having fun
Promote positive and happy workplace

Your group will start with an engaging physical icebreaker to form all the participants into teams. Each team is given an iPad loaded with our event app to get things started. Teams are now on the hunt, analyzing clues and navigating their way through the city. Teams will develop the best possible strategy to beat the other teams. Groups use their iPads to answer quizzes, tour points of interest, solve puzzles, and tackle photo and video missions during their hunt.

Once all the challenges are complete, it’s a race against the other teams – and the clock – back to home base. Laughter, accomplishment, and fond memories are additional benefits to this event. Teams will improve trust, communication, and effective problem-solving skills. The hunt features two-way messaging. Teams are connected with our lead facilitator, stationed at the ending location, which tracks racers using GPS. The facilitator downloads photos, video, and scoring throughout the hunt for a big-screen presentation of the action during the event. Teams will never lose connectivity to their game. Een if the hunt takes them indoors. All photos, videos, and scoring are sent to us throughout the event. We will have them on the big screen when your teams arrive at the final location. After the program, we will also send you a link that contains all the photos and videos shot by your group. The page also includes an edited video plus all the scores, photos, and videos from each participating team. Now, that’s SMART!

Try a SmartHunt at your next corporate event

So if your group wants to explore a city, museum, or an attraction, our SmartHunts® location challenges will make sure your teams won’t miss a thing. Our national account managers will take the time to get to know you and your company walking through the details of your upcoming event. Our objective is to recommend the best team building program that will be right for your event whether it’s a SmartHunts® or something that’s customized just for you.

SmartHunts® has been delivering professional corporate team building events since 2010. We have built a solid reputation by working hard to deliver top-quality programming for our clients. Learn more here.

Tweet Tweet

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” – Mark Twain

Did you know that we’re on Twitter? It’s true! For the latest high-tech innovations in corporate events, fun interactions, and photos from the many gorgeous locations where we facilitate programs, follow us @BestCorpEvents.

Best Corporate Events and SmartHunts® Hit the Big Apple!

“New York, New York! A helluva town!” –Bernstein, Comden, and Green, authors of ‘On the Town’

SmartHunts, our high-tech scavenger hunts featuring an Apple iPad for every team, are spreading! As part of our partnership with Planet Hollywood® and Buca di Beppo®, SmartHunts® are now available in Las Vegas… and the one and only Times Square in the heart of New York City! Whether it’s sightseeing throughout the area and running into celebrity look-a-likes who help you on your journey or bonding with the Godfather’s ‘family,’ these programs are unique, full of energy, and incredibly fun! Plus, they actively make teams better at collaborating and sharing information. We’re proud to offer SmartHunts that include dinner and drinks at a star-studded location, right in the heart of the Big Apple!

Top Ten Events

“Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.” -John C. Maxwell

Clients often ask which programs are our best sellers, so we’ve launched a new page on the Best Corporate Events website: Top Ten Events! It features our most popular events – with links to their individual pages containing full descriptions, videos, and requirements – and will be updated every six months with the latest data. Looking for team building programs that have been honed to perfection and truly work? You’ve found them!

Best TeamBuilding and SmartHunts in Meetings Focus Magazine

“We just did a program… where half their group was in Calgary and the other half in New Orleans. They did a hunt together in two countries in two time zones!” – Best TeamBuilding CEO Scott Flynn, as quoted in the article

Last month, Meetings Focus magazine interviewed our CEO Scott Flynn for a piece about how technology has changed the face of team building. The article, written by Paul D. Kretkowski, starts with our trademarked SmartHunts, the only offering which includes an iPad for every team. It discusses the advantages of a paper-free program: it’s more immersive, better for the planet, can change on the fly, automatically uploads media and tallies scores, memorializes the event with photos and videos shot from the team’s iPads, and can incorporate local landmarks or present company knowledge in a fun way.

We are always delighted to get to enthusiastically share what we’ve spent several years developing into the only iPad-based proprietary scavenger hunt around – and why we believe its advantages make it one of the best, most technologically-advanced corporate events on earth!

The Importance of a Strong Team

“No man is wise enough by himself.” –Titus Maccius Plautus

Even back in 250BC, Plautus (quoted above) knew that it took a team to move a project, an idea, a civilization forward; no man – or woman – could achieve enough knowledge on his or her own to accomplish it all alone. Has anything changed in the ensuing years? Have centuries of technological advances put us in an era where Plautus’ words no longer hold true? Some might argue that one 21st century man, with the knowledge of the world findable via the phone in his pocket, is wise indeed. But if his Wi-Fi or satellite connection goes out, doesn’t the fact that he can barely remember his best friend’s phone number let alone formulas, translations, or other important data mean that it was the phone, not the man himself, we might consider wise?

It takes a team – usually the one within our workplace, but also the larger network of website contributors – to truly have the combined wisdom required to make important decisions or move society forward. Innovation comes from teamwork. We here at Best Corporate Events are in the business of bringing these teams together, stronger than ever, and we believe doing so leads to strong groups that take big steps. It’s our little way of proudly helping make the world a better place.

Welcome to the BEST blog, a collection of team building articles, industry insights and news about our large collection of programs and events offered in locations across North America.

Need help getting started or want a quote? We are here to help.

Category: Scavenger Hunts

Charitable CSR Programs

SmartHunts® (High-Tech Scavenger Hunts)

Team Building Events

Conclusion

How it began

Escape Rooms are now portable!

Here are the many benefits to completing an escape room with your team.

You get all the pictures!

Groups Love a Scavenger Hunt

Just a few of the benefits of a SmartHunt® include:

Try a SmartHunt at your next corporate event

Photostream

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Programs can be delivered anywhere in North America.

If you have immediate questions, please contact us at:

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Programs can be delivered anywhere in North America.

If you have immediate questions, please contact us at:

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