In theory, team building events are a great way to boost company morale and get everyone working together. In practice, the phrase ‘team building’ can conjure up the grimace-provoking suggestion of trust falls and awkward attempts at socialising with your coworkers. There are a few important factors to making sure your event is actually effective and enjoyable – and all of them can be found inside an escape room!
So what makes an escape room so great for team building?
Build Relationships Between Coworkers
There’s nothing like the pressure of having to ‘escape’ to get people talking to each other. The experience of being in an escape room is exciting and immersive enough to break through any awkwardness, getting your team communicating – and with an immediate puzzle-solving goal to work towards, there’s no lack of things to talk about! Not to mention there are all the added conversational benefits of sharing your experiences with each other down the pub after the event.
Work Together – Or Else!
Escape rooms are an activity that relies on teamwork in order to get done. Bouncing ideas off each other, teams manage to solve puzzles together that would have taken them hours and hours to struggle through alone. Successfully solving an escape room requires a range of different skills, abilities, and thinking styles, so you’re going to truly have to work as a team in order to make the most of the combined abilities of everyone in the room, encouraging everyone to contribute.
The Right Level Of Competition
One of the difficult calls to make when planning a team building event is how competitive to make it – the pressure of competition can be an added fun factor that helps teams bond together, but there’s always the risk of resentment for the losing team. Escape rooms provide the ideal amount of competition – your team is competing against the clock, attempting to beat the puzzles within the time limit, so while there’s an element of competition in trying to get a quicker time or have less hints than the other teams, just finishing the room provides a sense of victory to be proud of.
Practise Transferable Skills
Doing an escape room also allows your team building event to practise skills that are useful in any workplace situation- without making it into a chore. Escaping an ancient tomb fraught with dangers might not be an everyday workplace requirement at your company, but problem solving, critical thinking, reacting to time pressure, and working as a team to find solutions are all important parts of being able to solve an escape room. And, unlike with other problem solving team activities you might have tried within your workplace, the excitement and high-stakes scenario of an escape room is enough to make practising these skills feel meaningful: you’re working towards a real end goal, and putting these skills into practise could mean the difference between failure and success.
Get Out of the Office
It can be hard to hold a great team event when you’re all still in the workplace. People are more likely to engage with your event if it doesn’t feel like ‘going to work’, and getting out of the office gets you out of the office mindset, knocking down barriers between people and allowing everyone to socialise and problem-solve on the same footing. Being in a different setting can bring out strengths that might not be obvious in the context of the usual company hierarchy. And it’s also a lot easier for whoever’s got the job of organising the event – no rearranging furniture or cleaning up afterwards; just show up and save the world (and maybe go out for a hard-earned drink afterwards)!
Have Fun!
Finally, and the most important factor: escape rooms are fun. Everyone’s motivated, excited, and sure to be talking about the event for a long time afterwards. It’s a great opportunity to build morale, increase engagement, and turn a team building event into an experience that everyone involved will love – and have a great time in the process.
If you’re interested in booking our escape rooms for your next corporate team building event, you can email admin@lockhouse.co.uk to see how we accommodate your team.