Effective team building events are more than just forced ice breakers or embarrassing videos everyone wishes didn’t get shared with the entire company. They must also include exercises and activities that will unify your team in the days, weeks and months ahead of their inevitable resignation. Here are the 10 most deeply meaningful team building exercises.*

*These exercises have no proven results or benefits.

1. Pigeon Yoga

Have you heard of goat yoga? Pigeon yoga is the new team-building exercise trend.

How to do it: Find an outdoor grassy area. Make everyone do Downward Dog while you toss pigeon-attracting breadcrumbs. Exercise. Outdoors. Wildlife. Win. Win. Win.

Outcome: This will prepare the team for fighting for scraps when it comes to bonus time.

2. Musical Ergonomic Office Chairs

Everyone loved musical chairs as a child! Keep the nostalgia going with an ergonomically approved version.

How to do it: Use OSHA-approved chairs that roll. Everyone has to guess where the chairs are going next and get their butts in one before the music stops.

Outcome: This is a great way to get the team to practice being at their desk the second the boss walks in.

3. Office Escape Game

Who needs a fancy Escape Room when you’ve got a cube farm maze?

How to do it: Barricade the doors then set a countdown clock. Whoever gets out first wins. Whoever is last has to sleep in the office overnight. (See item 8: The Office Sleepover)

Outcome: The every-man-for-himself nature of this exercise will make your team even more fiercely competitive which will make it easier to fire people who can’t withstand the pressure.

4. Twister

Twister is another opportunity to play on nostalgia.

How to do it: Get out the Twister board. Add in ice-breaker questions for each turn. Who doesn’t love talking about their dog’s death with one hand on yellow and one foot on green? Note: Have HR prepare release forms in case someone’s hand accidentally ends up on someone’s butt.

Outcome: This will help weed out those folks who are prone to committing sexual harassment.

5. Playing Telephone

How to do it: This simple team building exercise has office messages whispered around a circle, sometimes through a tin can. Relay the final message to the intended recipient and watch hijinks ensue.

Outcome: This exercise will make the team realize how vital good communication is, before they immediately go back to ignoring each other.

6: Chopped: Break Room Refrigerator Edition

Even Alton Brown hasn’t tried to make an entrée with cold fried chicken and a PB&J.

How to do it: Take everything out of the office refrigerator. Get into teams and get to cooking. The best dish is the winner. (Office policy requiring an EpiPen at every copier station should be instituted prior to any Chopped competitions.)

Outcome: After this exercise, you will have successfully cleaned out the office refrigerator.

7. Opaque Leggings Pageant

What office team building exercise isn’t complete without a beauty pageant? New HR rules on dress code help you kill two birds with one pageant.

How to do it: Line up ladies in leggings and take an office vote. Too sheer and they get a note in their file. Opaque enough and they are ready for Pigeon Yoga (Item #1). Beautify the Office campaigns can be well served by Leggings Pageants.

Outcome: Winners have their spirits raised and losers have something to work towards on their Beauty Breaks.

8. The Office Sleepover

Renting an offsite venue for an offsite can get pricey but here’s a tip: no one is using your offices overnight and you can still call it an offsite.

How to do it: Ask everyone to bring their pajamas and stay the night. Add in things like a fire pit in accounting to make a night of team-building fun. When things get slow, suggest maybe working on that presentation or finishing that overdue project.

Outcome: The team gets to know each other’s fun nighttime habits as well as hopefully get that overdue project done.

9. Back-to-Back Drawing

How to do it: Seat them all back to back with sketchpads. Have them draw their partner and then post the results as your new office artwork. Saving money while making art is good for business! Combining Back-to Back Drawing with the equally fun keyboarding contest “I Can Type and Speak in All Caps” helps employees communicate better through art AND typing. Striving for arts integration is always a priority!

Outcome: This team building exercise will bring out your employees’ artistic sides.

10. Multi-Level Marketing Monday

Does everyone on your team try to sell home business items or school wrapping paper? Have a Multi Level Marketing Monday to build the team from within.

How to do it: Set up a craft fair and give employees their own tables to sell their wares. Bonus idea: Make things interesting by requiring sales be made in an actual human pyramid. (All employees must sign the “Can’t Make More Money Selling Candles, Children’s Books or Wrapping Paper” clause before participating.)

Outcome: Employees get that entrepreneurial bug out of their system, so they can go back to getting that overdue project done.

The post Here are the 10 Most Deeply Meaningful Team Building Exercises appeared first on The Cooper Review.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us in Human Resources! We wanted to have a little fun so we created these fun Valentine’s Day cards for the company. Hope you like them and feel free to share!

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“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” – Joseph Heller

The office work week is hard. But when someone at work is out to get you, every day is even more difficult. Is someone out to get you? Or are you just being paranoid? Is there any difference? Here are 15 signs to help you figure it out.

1. Have you noticed that your cube is a little unsteady? That your cube walls (and your walls alone) are covered in something resembling burlap that rips at your clothes like Velcro? Your cubicle walls were obviously designed to collapse on you Indiana Jones style without warning. The person who designed your office space looks innocent enough with their samples of fabric and laminate. But those cube walls may have been set up on a booby track system designed to crush you on a random Tuesday. The walls may quite literally close in on you. Remote work is the only safe zone.

2. Are your work plans are being sabotaged? If you are sent to visit Bill in Accounting and once you get there, no one knows who that is and even worse, your accounting services are outsourced or in a different building; someone is out to get you. While you are gone on this wild Bill chase, your lunch disappears and Susan gets the promotion. Bill you once, shame on Bill. Bill you twice, shame on you.

3. Are people in the office planting ideas in your head? When they say the company is going under and your job is in jeopardy, don’t believe them. You will know for sure as new employees arrive and your furniture is taken to auction. Until then, hang on. Believe no one. Even news organizations reporting massive stock drops and your CEO being indicted are in on the lies.

4. Who is the chirpy woman who brings around celebration cards while asking for money and your signature? Watch out for that woman. When you just want her to leave your office, she will slip you a sympathy card and tell you to sign “Happy Birthday!”. She may also be secretly pocketing the money and making you look cheap as well as insensitive.

5. Is there a secret microphone by the water cooler? This is the place you should be the most careful. It is easy to plant a microphone where everyone gathers. Your coworkers may actually be a double agent spiriting away secrets once a week with that empty water bottle.

6. Why is it that around 3:00 PM, you feel your eyes getting heavy? Everyone says that is because you ate four Snickers bars and drank three Cokes at lunch. What do they know? No one knows for sure that sleeping gases aren’t being released through the A/C vents at 3:00 PM to reduce your productivity. No one knows if someone slipped an Ambien in your third Coke.

7. Are the clocks in the office set to the correct time? Do not rely on office clocks. Or time clocks. For obvious reasons. Everyone else leaves early. Everyone else is still getting paid for a full eight hours. You might be able to count on the town square clock but only until time travelers destroy it with lightning.

8. Why does the food you place in the office refrigerator disappear almost immediately? Avoid this refrigerator all costs. Keep any food on your person at all times. In a fanny pack if necessary. Add an alarm to your lunch bag.

9. The entire office does not have the third Monday in October off.

10. Why does your boss know when exactly when you don’t have the answer? Ever noticed that if you don’t know the answer in an important meeting, your boss will call on you expecting you to have a PowerPoint and full financial report to answer his questions?

11. Why does no one ever poop at the office? They are obviously all cyborgs. Or everyone has had a colostomy. Examine all suspect Snickers bars closely.

12. It is not called Taco Wednesday. Taco Wednesday is a cruel joke when you don’t bring your lunch because you think there will be tacos in the office conference room.

13. Are the Help Desk guys are only there to help themselves to your files? If Word has been updated and you can’t remember your password, someone has accessed your files without asking.

14. “Bring your kid to work day” is just another way to bring spies to the office. That cute kid? They are taking notes in their composition notebook to share with your boss. They are also stealing the good stuff from the candy jar on your desk.

15. Is the pigeon on the roof a company carrier pigeon that sends reports on your productivity to headquarters three times a day? Come to think of it: it may even be Susan’s pet pigeon. You signed a birthday card for the pigeon and donated $5 for pigeon cake. The pigeon must be dealt with. After you prop up your cube with 2×4’s. And stick your sandwich down your pants.

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