What are team competitions?
Team competitions are friendly contests between coworkers on either the same team or different teams within an organization. Instilling team competitions in the workplace can significantly improve the work environment and company culture. Not only do team competitions make work a more fun place to be, but the right contest can gamify processes like customer satisfaction, sales, and quality assurance.
Team competitions can also be used to bring employees outside of a department closer together to form bonds across the entire organization. Plus, since competitions can provide new motivation to work together and excel in different categories, organizations may choose to utilize employee recognition software to see who is making the most out of these competitions.
Team competition ideas
There are different types of team competitions and contests that a company can choose to roll out. Anything can be turned into a contest in a fun office setting, from bakeoffs to decorating a desk for a holiday or occasion.
Here are some types of team competition that work across all different types of offices and industries:
- Fitness/weight loss/step competition
- Cubicle or desk decoration competition
- Office food drive/potluck competition
- Holiday-inspired dress-up competition
- Virtual or in-person team trivia
Benefits of team competitions
When incorporating team competitions into the foundation of a working environment, there are many benefits an organization can experience.
Some of these benefits include:
- Improved employee innovation: Can help employees think outside of the box and create new and improved processes regarding business and customer solutions.
- Inspiration to succeed as a team: When there’s a competition and a prize to win, it further motivates employees to work together to be the winning team. Competition is all about bringing employees together while also reminding them that they’re all working toward the same goal within the competition and the business as a whole. It also provides a chance to set aside any rivalries employees may have with one another.
- Gain new skills and interests: Team competitions can push people out of their comfort zone to learn something new. Doing so can give the team a better chance to win the competition and help the organization achieve future success.
- Enhanced productivity: Even if employees work efficiently regularly, a team competition can get competitors to work faster and harder as a team, especially when the goal is to win. Employees don’t want to let their team down, so they’re more engaged to achieve top performance by being as productive as possible.
- A boost in team bonding: Nothing brings employees together like working toward a common goal that’s fun. Competition can help create new bonds across teams and friendships with colleagues in different departments. Those who feel like they may not have anything in common with a coworker may find a mutual interest through team competition. Competition can also promote a new topic of conversation for employees to participate in.
Team competition best practices
When conducting a team competition, there are some best practices to follow to ensure that it’s a smooth and successful process where everyone knows the rules and team bonding is the end result.
- Determine the type of contest:Depending on the office setting, choose an appropriate type of team competition for the office. This will provide a better understanding of the end goal, such as a boost in camaraderie or healthy eating habits.
- Drum up excitement: For the competition to be a success, get the word out around the office and create some excitement. This will convince as many employees to participate as possible and build some buzz. This can be accomplished by announcing prizes, sending out reminders, or hanging up flyers around the office
- Set the rules: Before the competition, set the rules and know how long the contest will last or run for. These guidelines should be easy to follow and distributed before the competition begins. It’s important to confirm there are no questions about the rules or how to win before kicking things off.
- Divide employees into teams: If it’s not an individually-based competition, divide the employees fairly into teams. Whether it’s small or large groups, it’s common for workplace competitions to serve as team-building challenges, so try and break into teams of employees who don’t work with one another consistently. If running more than one competition a year, don’t recycle teams so different employees can meet and mingle.
- Award prizes: For some, the thrill of winning and having bragging rights is enough. For others, it’s needed to award an exciting prize for the employee, or team, who wins the competition. Rewards can include more paid time off, gift cards, department equipment upgrades, or company swag.
- Get feedback: Once one competition is over, consider collecting feedback from those who participated. This can be tracked through employee engagement software to know what to improve next time there’s a competition and collect actionable insights from how the team benefited from working together.
Mara Calvello
Mara Calvello is a Content and Communications Manager at G2. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Elmhurst College (now Elmhurst University). Mara writes content highlighting G2 newsroom events and customer marketing case studies, while also focusing on social media and communications for G2. She previously wrote content to support our G2 Tea newsletter, as well as categories on artificial intelligence, natural language understanding (NLU), AI code generation, synthetic data, and more. In her spare time, she's out exploring with her rescue dog Zeke or enjoying a good book.
