Boost Employee Morale Activities – with Trivia
Boost Employee Morale Activities – with Trivia
Managers and team leaders are always looking at ways to improve the team work and morale of any given workforce. No matter what the industry, the size of the team or indeed the nature of their business, success cannot be achieved without staff working together and aiming for the same goal. Companies can encourage morale by all sorts of manners but are constantly sourcing new ways and new ideas to boost employee morale and hosting a trivia day may just be the answer. Are you a manger with a workforce in need of a boost? Does your workforce lack team work? Are you looking to blend a new workforce together? Then a trivia event may be right for you.
Mobile entertainers and trivia hosts from around the world are frequently hired by companies to come into their facilities to do various team building exercises to boost employee morale. Hospitals and banks in virtually every community spend a significant amount of money hiring motivational speakers to appear before the staff to get them pumped up. Others will hire local DJ entertainers to do various games that lent toward team-building activities. If you are a local trivia host these next points will help you get into this lucrative market.
The first step in this, for you as a Trivia Host, is to put together an appealing pitch. Think about the pitch and it should be about what YOU can offer and focus on the power of team building. Getting into this sort of line of trivia work can be very lucrative for you so you need to spend time and make a unique pitch. Don’t just use a standard pitch you use for bars and other venues, focus on how YOUR trivia night and YOUR services can benefit THEM. Get testimonials and referrals from companies you have done annual parties for, and discuss your additional service of teambuilding and morale boosting. This should be your first consideration.
Next, approach all medical or financial institutions in your area (especially those with whom you have already done annual parties for) and schedule a meeting with someone in HR. This is a crucial step, as it is mainly the HR person who will directly secure your service or will be the one to go to bat for you to submit your proposal to upper management. The HR is your key person.
Once you have been booked it is time to deliver. If you get it right and provide a rich, fulfilling and morale boosting day, you are going to find that you will be booked time and time again, word will spread around local businesses and your business will grow rapidly. Create a simple questionnaire for the booking client to fill out. Find out some of the challenges employees face.
- What are the employees strengths?
- Their weaknesses?
- What frustrates and irritates their employees the most?
- What improvements does the client expect to see in their staff after you have completed the team-building sessions?
- What changes to most employees want to see made?
- What are some of the unrealistic expectations of the employees?
Armed with this kind of information is key to successful team-building and morale boosting activities. Center your trivia questions and game activities around the answers to these questions which will create a custom event tailored to the company and culture of the employees.
Additional questions should be asked:
- Who is the ‘class clown’ in the staff?
- Who is most likely to sing karaoke at a bar?
- Who is the most outgoing?
- Who is the office prankster/practical joker?
Once you get these names, you know who your extroverted people are in attendance long before you do the event. This is crucial because these are key people who can be team captains for groups you form for your activities, but also can be the butt of your jokes.
The whole event needs to be team based and morale boosting. You are not looking for rocket science here and hard general knowledge trivia but simply looking for appealing structures and formats that will encourage team work. Forget about simply a pen and paper trivia for the entire day. Utilize list questions, working out questions with problem solving exercises, questions where each team member gives one answers….anything that can get people talking. If you are using music trivia and picture trivia make sure you vary the age range and the type of music then everyone should be able to answer one. If you end up with 1-2 players in each team who feel left out then you have failed.
That’s how the session can start, with some simple trivia and then it is time to bring in the more complex games. I would advise having 3-4 different parts of your trivia day and splitting the teams up each time meaning everyone gets to work with everyone else and the whole company is more friendly and morale is boosted. Encourage the management to get involved and perhaps even have a quiet work and see if they can be the butt of some jokes.
This is where again, your trivia technology can come into play. First and foremost games that are good for players and the audience would be interesting. Think about Clobber (see previous postings – I know I keep mentioning it but it really is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of trivia entertainment), wireless buzzer systems and audience polling. Get everyone involved and use every last bit of gadgetry you can to ensure that people feel inclined to take part. They are probably going to anyway as they will obliged with it being a work situation but make it much more fun for them than they were expecting. The minute a person gets bored in your trivia event is the minute you are not doing the job you were hired for.
The moral boost may also come from using some of the custom game show systems you may have purchased. DigiGames can offer fully customizable systems that can suit large number of players who can take part in games and events based on their favorite TV show. This is going to be familiar, easy to run and make sure people have something to remember. It will certainly boost morale to be the “Jeopardy Champions” of the office!
All in all if you are booked for such an event you have to remember what your mandate is and that is to entertain and boost morale. It is not merely a contest of knowledge and not simply a way to introduce your pub trivia into a new setting. It is an event were your sole aim is to get people working together, boost morale and give your audience an enjoyable day. Do this and reap the rewards!
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