12 Fun Training Games for Employees

Who says training can’t be fun and engaging? We’ve listed down the most fun training games for employees to enjoy and learn from and for you to include in your next training program. Apart from learning, you can also use these small fun activities for employees to create a better team-building experience.

Benefits of making fun and engaging training for employees

It goes without saying that the best way to keep employees engaged in training is to make learning fun and interesting. Games are one of the best ways to make training less boring and more interactive. So, let's talk about some of the concrete benefits of fun training for employees:

• Higher knowledge retention: Learners are more likely to remember lessons and topics when it's associated with good and meaningful memories. Games heighten this experience by stimulating learners and rewarding them with prizes or similar rewards.
• Seamless completion rates: Games will keep people coming back for more. When training is fun, your teams will want to keep going and keep learning which will ensure completion rates are up. This is most helpful for things like compliance training.
• Opportunities for upskilling: When employees are excited to learn, they'll start growing. Upskilling employees will have a long-term impact on the organization as it will open up opportunities. Competent employees are productive and will drive growth for the company.

1. Trivia Quizzes

Workplace trivia quizzes are one of the most popular forms of fun training games for employees. They’re entertaining, challenging, and guaranteed to make everyone laugh. To get started, pick a theme for your trivia quiz. If you’re looking for something specific for your organization, you can choose a theme based on workplace trivia games, fun facts about co-workers, or things they need to know about the organization. Remember to try to keep the quiz game lighthearted since it can get pretty competitive and heated at times.

If you’re looking for a quiz maker, look no further. Take advantage of EdApp’s quiz creator. With this quiz maker, you can upload spreadsheets for easy quiz-making and access real-time leaderboards. If you want to add more gamification elements, you can also use EdApp’s massive template library, which are all designed with microlearning and active learning in mind.

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2. Human Knot

Human Knot is a fun training game for employees that enhances group dynamics, communication skills, and relationship building. Participants are instructed to form a circle, shoulder to shoulder with each other, facing the inside of the circle. Each participant is told to extend their right arm and grasp the hand of the person standing across from them.

The same thing happens with their left arm. There are two rules to take note of when playing this game: 1) everybody must hold hands with two separate persons, and 2) no one should join hands with someone standing immediately next to them.

The goal of the game is to untie everyone who has formed a human knot without splitting the circle. If the chain breaks, they’d have to start from the beginning.

3. Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts are fun learning games for adults that never fail to unlock each person’s resourcefulness and coordination through competitive physical activity. They’re popular ways for inter-functional and unrelated teams to build collaboration and innovation. 

Divide your participants into two or more groups based on the overall number of participants. It’s important to make the groups as equal as possible for this fun training game for employees.  Make a list of objects to find or tasks to be completed by each team, along with a deadline. The team that completes all of the stated tasks first wins. You can spice up scavenger hunts by introducing puzzles, hints, twists, and so on to bring them to the finish line or last objective. 

4. Helium Stick

A fun training game for employees that can both be equally fun and frustrating is the Helium Stick or Magic Cane. It’s a fun work game that’s great for fostering lessons in collaboration to achieve a common goal or objective.

Divide the group of 8-12 people into two lines that face one another. The goal is to be able to lower a stick to the ground without letting it fall. But where exactly does the stick go? Participating employees should place the stick on their index fingers (without grabbing or finger curling).

This sounds easy enough to do, but can become a difficult challenge since the stick has to be passed on to the next person without letting it fall. This stirs up a lot of emotions such as suspense, enjoyment, and frustration until the group learns to focus and work together to lower the stick.

5. Blind Wine Waiter

Blind Wine Waiter is one of the games to play at work with coworkers if you want to loosen up with one another and are having communication problems at work.

Form groups of 5-6 individuals, with one person serving as the leader and the rest serving as waiters. Those acting as waiters must be blindfolded, and the leader must sit on their hands. The objective is to serve wine to the group leader, who needs to drink it without touching the glass. Each team is given one wine bottle, one glass, and one corkscrew. These are placed throughout the room in various areas for the blinded members to find.

The catch is that each participant can only complete one task at a time, using only one hand, i.e., If someone has spotted the glass, he can’t go looking for the wine bottle.

When the leader sips the wine from the glass, it’s game over.

6. What’s in the Room

What’s in the Room is a fun training game for employees that unlocks your participants’ creativity, originality, and salesmanship. If you want to train your sales and marketing teams, this is an ideal team-building exercise for them. This training activity requires teams to select any random item in the room and create a marketing strategy to sell it. Participants have to go through the entire process of marketing their product: branding, logo, selling strategy, etc. All of this must be completed within a specific time frame. When the timer goes out, each group has to do a presentation and try to sell their product to the other teams.

7. Hear Me Out

Many conflicts in the team happen as a result of miscommunications and inactive listening. Doing Hear Me Out as a fun training game for employees can help mitigate this problem. Hear Me Out asks one of your participants to read a paper aloud in front of their team members. The paper contains a lot of mind-numbing but intelligible jargon and unrelated terms. The paper should be read in monotone, with no emphasis on the “actual” sentences.

The remaining participants are handed a sheet of paper and instructed to jot down their interpretations of the text. You can also test them on random material from the text and debate who heard what as well as why they tuned you out.

8. Last 30 Seconds

This fun training game for employees helps your participants know more about their coworkers by giving them a glimpse of who they really are in 30 seconds. participants have a minute to think about life experiences they want to share. It can be about a thrilling, life-changing or rewarding experience. The search is then narrowed down to which moment they’d like to relive in the “final 30 seconds of their life.”

The second phase of the game allows participants to get to know one another on a more personal level by having them discuss the moments they chose. This simple and interactive game brings team members closer to one another.

9. Shoe Scrambler

Shoe Scrambler is a fun training game for employees that makes your participants loosen up and work with one another. Have everyone on the team remove their shoes and place them in a large pile. Toss them around to mix them up. Divide the group into small groups and instruct them to form a straight line, somewhat away from the pile. The first players on each team run to the shoe pile, look for their shoe pair, put them on, and tie them back up.

The player then returns to their team line and slaps the next individual in line a high-five while saying, “Go!” (like a relay). The next participant goes after their shoe pair next. The first team to put on shoes (with shoelaces tied) wins.

10. Human Spring

If you want to train your participants on interdependence, trust, and cooperation, Human Spring is a fun training game for your employees. Members of the group pair up with teammates that are almost their same size. The pair must face each other with their elbows bent, hands up, and palms facing forward. Their palms have to touch each other’s and they should progressively lean in towards each other, finally holding each other up.

Ask your participants to shift their feet further and further backward, until their weight is shifted to rely on their partners. The partner with the greatest distance between their feet wins. Or if done for fun, you can add up everyone’s distances.

11. Egg Drop

Egg Drop is a traditional and fun training game for employees that unites your teams through creative problem-solving, collaboration, and employee engagement. The goal is to create an egg package/carrier that can withstand a 2-4-story drop while keeping the entire egg intact. Straws, tape, plastic, balloons, rubber bands, and newspaper are commonly used to make the box. The entire exercise lasts around 1-1.5 hours. The winning squad is the one that survives the free fall. In the event of a tie, raising the height of the egg-fall acts as a tiebreaker.

12. Talking in Circles

Talking in Circles is an extremely fun and challenging game that requires a great deal of communication, leadership skills, trust, and cooperation among the team. The group is instructed to make a circle by standing in a circle around a long length of thread knotted at the ends. The team is then instructed to make string forms such as squares, triangles, figure eights, rectangles, and many more. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is, but luckily, with the right communication skills, your participants may find this game to be a piece of cake.

EdApp is a mobile learning management system designed for today’s digital habits, delivering more engaging and effective micro-learning directly to participants anytime and anywhere.

Sign up for this fun training game for employees tool today.