6 ways to develop staff culture

This activity takes a bit of preparation but is worth the effort – it is one of my personal favourites. In essence, it requires someone to conduct a survey of all staff and revealing the information at an upcoming social event.

Purpose:

• To provide a fun way for staff to get to know one another better.
• To showcase how a Google Form and Slideshow can be used.

Instructions:

1. Use a Google Form and gather the following information:
   • Name
   • Photo
   • Something they think others may not know about them that they are willing to share. This could be something a little obscure, or even riske!
2. Collate the information using a Google Slideshow, putting each person’s ‘clue’ onto a separate slide. On the following slide, place the photo and name of the person. Alternatively, you might wish to have all the clues and organise it as a sort of BINGO session, where the clues are revealed towards the end – your choice.
3. Hold a social event to run the game. The idea is for people to try and figure out which person relates to which ‘clue’ which creates great discussion and in many cases, hilarity.
4. We found putting people into teams is a great way to have some fun.

We’ve set this activity up so that the person who has never used a Google Slideshow is responsible for collating the clues about each person. Of course, you might decide to buddy them up with someone who can help collate it!

This exercise is a guessing game where each person in the team has to come up with three ideas.

Purpose: to deepen each person’s knowledge about the team and encourage interaction and communication.

Instructions:

1. Have each person list three items – two must be truths about themselves and one must be a lie. The lie must be believable.
2. Place these up for all to see.
3. Get participants to try and figure out which is the lie for each person.
4. Once all participants have guessed, the first person reveals which is the lie and tells the story behind it.

There are a variety of ways you can organise this game. For example:

• collect post it notes (without anyone seeing them)
• use a Google Form to capture the ideas, then present as a Google Slideshow
• turn the ideas into a card game

This activity requires some drama and opens the possibility up for exploring bias.

Purpose: to help the team develop a sense of how to treat each other’s job role and to explore how people may treat others based on their role.

Instructions:

1. Put a label or name tags on each team member’s back with a name of people type like a builder, athlete, doctor, teacher, mechanic, homeless, hard of hearing, etc. You might choose different roles to spark varying viewpoints.
2. Group members have to treat the person according to how they view their role/label.
3. Group members will see each other’s tags and for a set amount of time ask questions to each other according to the tags they have on them.
4. Each person has to figure out what the label is on them on the basis of how the rest team treats them and ask them questions.
5. Once a person figures out their role/label they can exit the game.

This one is great to reveal experiences that members may have had so they learn about one another. You can adapt it to work in virtual situations too, by creating a poll with statements, and having participants choose ‘Have’, or ‘Never have’.

Purpose: to explore aspects about people that we don’t know.

Instructions:

1. Have everyone sit in a circle with chairs.
2. One person is in the middle – their job is to prompt.
3. The prompter asks ‘Have you ever…’ placing something on the end of the sentence stem.
4. If people have experienced or done the activity, they must move.

For teams where members are new, start with some low-risk ideas that get everyone moving. For example:

Have you ever…

• ridden a horse
• fallen off a trampoline
• cried in a Pixar movie
• broken a bone
• dropped my phone in the toilet
• gotten a tattoo you regretted.

This one is really fun and will cause a LOT of laughter. Get ready to be silly!

Purpose: to have a lot of fun and laughter!

Instructions:

1. Make a list of as many well-known songs you can think of. These can be theme songs or just well-known anthems… it doesn’t matter.
2. Write each song onto a piece of paper and place these into a hat.
3. Break the group into teams and have each team draw a song.
4. Take turns for each team to hum/whistle or act the song (decide this based on the group, or change it up for different groups).
5. The other teams have to guess the song.

Change it up by having points and prizes. If you really want to increase the difficulty, introduce a food each group has to eat prior to performing (eg. Weet-Bix, crackers, marshmellows, etc. but don’t let anyone choke!).

If you have an Android device, there is an app for this game on the Play store.

Set up a Word Cloud and get your team to think for a minute or two, and then share one word that describes X.

X could be your office culture, their job or their most recent project. You can even make X specific to your meeting agenda to make the activity more relevant and fun.

Great tools to use online for this activity include:

• mentimeter.com
• kahoot.com
• polleverywhere.com