What's been the best work-related social/team-building activity you've done

[Reallybadidea]

Looking to book something for our team over the summer. In the past we've done a day at the races, go-karting, dragon boat racing and they've all gone down well. Could do with some inspiration for this year if anyone has any suggestions 🙏

Axe Throwing!

Cookery classes where you work together to cook a meal then eat it together.

Yes I second axe throwing

I'm public sector where we never do anything like that, but a friend who is private sector seems to quite often and has done clay pigeon shooting, treasure hunts, and something involving an art class - they were painting pictures, he sent me a pic of a brightly coloured lion he'd done!

I'm public sector where we never do anything like that

I was public sector too, and the best one was during the pandemic. It was via Teams, and you could turn your camera off, pretend you were participating and go online shopping instead 😀

I've just organised an offsite trip and it included a Master Chef style mystery box challenge in a professional kitchen. Three teams, one course each and all judged by chefs. They loved it.

We normally do evening ones only and did wine/cheese tasting, looked into cocktail making (didn’t work logistically), bowling, quiz nights (yes, they are hugely popular), mini golf and darts.
We did clay shooting and golf but had issues with finding locations everyone could access easily.

A summertime early evening rounders match between our company and a rival firm in the town after work, and we all went to the pub afterwards. Great fun.

We did a board games afternoon once, and everyone brought a dish for a shared lunch. It was so friendly and cheap and people could escape in time for school run where applicable.

My favourite was a treasure hunt in central London, but it was an expensive day out once travel and lunch were paid for.

We also did a Segway experience in a forest, some people didn’t enjoy it.

The Crystal Maze experience. The different challenges meant people could play to their strengths and we did a lot of cheering each other on!

Scavenger hunt in the city (London) bloody brilliant- so much fun.

Champagne tasting!

Haven’t actually done this one, but have used LEGO in some of my work and find it effective for team work/strategy building etc.

https://www.gotoevents.co.uk/lego-masters/

I prefer an away day with some sort of outcome or benefit beyond having a good laugh as a team (nothing wrong with that but on its own is a bit ‘so what?’) When I go on things like go carting I don’t have a lot of fun and would prefer to be getting on with my job. At least if the activity is work related in some way it can feel a bit more meaningful.

We hired some padel courts and went and played that one evening. That was fun.

A 2CV / cycling treasure hunt on the Belgian coast. Half the time in the cars/half on bikes. That was a hoot. An Italian cooking workshop where we made lunch and then ate it.

Where are you based @Reallybadidea ?

We had a private dinner at the Tower of London. It was a long time ago, and awesome. Private champagne viewing of the crown jewels and the chance to watch the 'ceremony of the keys' from inside the Tower. Amazing.

Clay pigeon shooting (indoors) with drink and food package.

Digger driving/obstacle course.

Indoor crazy golf with cocktails.

Ooh thanks for all the ideas!

@beasmithwentworth we're based in the Cambridge side of East Anglia.