10 Epic Team Building Activities for Frontline Workers

Team building gets a bad rep. From awkward ice breakers to mandatory HR events, the phrase “team bonding” may not spark immediate excitement in your frontline team. 

Yet, effective team building can create trust between co-workers, improve company culture, and make your employees feel more connected to the organization as a whole. In fact, research shows that team building can improve work ethic and innovation up to 10 times. 

To reap the benefits of team building, it’s crucial to find activities that actually engage your team members. This can be tricky for any team, but frontline & hourly teams are especially at risk of being forced into team building exercises that fall flat. 

Secchi is a #1 hourly performance management software that helps you enhance connections with your team and improve engagement levels. Team building is one of the things we swear by, so to help you build a better work environment, we’ve hand-picked a list of ten epic team building activities for frontline workers. 

1. Do a Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt is a versatile team building activity that you can easily adapt to your goals. It encourages your team members to put their heads together to find items or complete tasks. This can be a great way to break the ice with new hires or make your veteran teams feel more connected. 

If you want your new employees to feel more familiar with the facility, scavenger hunts are a great way to help them get more comfortable with the landscape. You can also take your team outdoors or use different mediums, such as photos, videos, or even QR codes, to encourage creativity and open communication. 

The best thing about this team-building game is that there are almost endless opportunities to customize it and make it fun for your team! 

2. Volunteer Together

Volunteering is a meaningful team building activity that’ll help you make a real difference. Instead of wasting resources on a happy hour that your employees are going to forget about a week later, take the day — or even just a few hours — to do community service. 

Improved mental health and lower mortality rates are known benefits of volunteering. What better team-building activity for frontline workers who often feel stressed and struggle with burnout? Have your team vote to choose a certain initiative or cause that they feel passionate about, and off you go! 

3. Take a Cooking Class

Who doesn’t like food? Treating your frontline team to a cooking class is a great way to help them bond and have fun together. There are many cooking class options out there, from learning the basics to Asian fusion, and it can easily be something that your team does from the comfort of their own homes. 

4. Try an Escape the Room Challenge

Helping your team improve their problem-solving skills can be fun. If you live in a city that offers popular escape-the-room challenges, take your employees out on a field trip to improve communication skills and teamwork. 

The idea is simple: your team is trapped in a room and has to work together to figure out how to escape before the time runs out. Depending on your location, there are likely multiple rooms to choose from. Find your way out from being trapped in a haunted mansion, travel below the earth, prevent an evil scientist from starting a pandemic — the choice is yours! 

This activity is not only fun and different but also encourages your team members to work together. It’s great for when you want your employees to build better trust and improve team culture. 

5. Solve a Puzzle

Get a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle — or something a bit more straightforward — and have your team work together to solve it. To make it even more fun, you can impose a time limit. Alternatively, split your workers up into teams and see which team is the first to finish. 

This team building game encourages teamwork and gives everyone a chance to contribute. Plus, you can get a puzzle for less than $10 on Amazon, which makes it one of the most cost-effective team building activities for frontline workers on this list. 

You can finish this team building exercise with a reflection or a discussion on how your employees worked together to solve the puzzle and what they learned from the experience. 

6. Bond Over Interactive Games

Games are a great way to bring your frontline team together and get to know each other better. There are almost endless work-friendly options to choose from, including Jenga, Apples to Apples, Monopoly, and Charades. If you have a large team, you can set a few game stations and randomly assign your workers to one of them (or give them the opportunity to choose). 

7. Learn a New Skill

Contrary to popular belief, frontline workers want more than just to collect a paycheck. Recent studies have shown that job growth and learning opportunities are among the most important drivers for frontline employees. A team building activity that allows your workers to improve their skills is a great way to meet their growing desire for professional development. 

Take your team to a professional development event, host a masterclass, or offer mentorship opportunities. You’ll walk away with a better & more productive workforce — plus, learning together makes people grow closer. 

8. Play a Survivor Game

If you want to do a team building activity that’s going to encourage your employees to get creative and practice negotiation, playing a survivor game is a great option. 

The idea is that your team is facing an extreme scenario — such as a plane crash or being stranded on a deserted island — and need to figure out which items are the most important for their survival. Examples of items typically include things like a compass, a can of butter, and extra shirts, but you can come up with your own categories. Here’s a good sample item list. 

Your team members have to negotiate which items to salvage and work together with their peers to figure out creative ways to use them. This exercise is going to help your employees improve their communication with each other, show leadership skills, and problem solve as a team. 

9. Find the Common Factor

This team building game is a fun way to help your team members break the ice and build stronger relationships. It’s quick, fun, and free, which makes it perfect for frontline teams. 

To find the common factor, have your employees raise their hand or move to a certain area of the room if a particular statement applies to them. For example, you can ask all left-handed team members to gather together. You can make up your own common factors and even relate them to the nature of your organization, but popular ideas include things like having pets or being a parent. 

 10. Play Mafia

Another cost-effective yet fun team building activity on this list, Mafia is a fantastic game that’s going to prompt discussions and help your team get to know each other better. Multiple versions of the game exist, but it will almost always involve a narrator, civilians, and mafia. If you want to take it to the next level, you can also include doctors and detectives in the game. 

Your employees will have to come together to make decisions and negotiate, which is great for communication skills and building stronger relationships. Plus, it’s simply a lot of fun and a great way to add more work/life balance to the frontline environment. 

Team building is easier with Secchi. From better engagement to more efficient communication, our hourly performance management software simplifies leading frontline teams. Book a demo to learn more.