Outdoor team building activities are team bonding & engagement exercises that take place outdoors. Whether you’re planning an event at a conference venue, hotel/resort or in your local city: there is an abundance of outdoor team building activities available to you! The best outdoor team building activities are ones where everyone in your group can easily take part & get involved. A Mini Olympics may be well suited to a sporty, competitive group whereas a Survivor has something for both brains and brawn! At Pinnacle Team Events, most outdoor team building activities are designed to suit all ranges of ages & fitness abilities. When planning an outdoor team building activity for your team, it is important to keep in mind the demographics of your group. This way, you can ensure that no one is excluded from the fun!
Benefits of Outdoor Team Building Activities
Research has shown that the happiness of employees directly effects businesses bottom line. The happier the employees the higher their output and enhanced performance. Team building provides the perfect opportunity for deepening employee connections whilst sharpening a variety of skills including communication, problem solving and critical thinking. And getting out of the office into some fresh air while you’re at it is a bonus!
Some benefits of outdoor team building activities include:
- Team building shouldn’t feel like just another day at work and the best way to get away from that feeling is to change the scene & take your team outdoors.
- Being outdoors takes your team out of their ‘normal’ work environment and into a more neutral setting. Without segregated offices or obvious hierarchy, your team will be far more likely to engage & connect with each other in a genuine way.
- Team building outside, especially for larger companies, means that you’re not bound by the confines of a conference room. You have an abundance of space to play with & therefore more team building activity options to choose from.
- After a day of work or looking at various PowerPoint slides, heading outside is the reset your delegates need. Being outdoors in nature will not only help to boost the mood & energy of your delegates, it will help to refocus their attention & encourage engagement.
Outdoor Team Building Activity Examples
We chatted to the team at Pinnacle Team Events to discuss various examples, they mentioned they have a variety of outdoor team building activities on offer. These range from scavenger hunt style activities such as the Amazing Race, The Scramble & the Water Taxi Treasure Hunt to head-to-head round robin style events like Survivor, Mini Beach Olympics & Carnivale, and finally our all-in group activities such as the Bridge to Unity & Project Pipeline.
The outdoor team building activity that will best suit your group will be determined by your group demographics, location, timeframe available & your desired outcomes for the activity.
Some of the most popular outdoor team building activities include:
The Amazing Race
The Amazing Race is one of the most popular outdoor team building activity. This exciting scavenger hunt style activity can be modified to suit any conference venue/resort or is perfectly suited to an urban/city location. Your group will be split into teams of approximately 6-8 people, with each team receiving a map of the surrounding area & cryptic clues that reveal your roadblock locations. At each roadblock location your team will compete in team-based challenges that focus on problem solving, teamwork, communication and of course – having fun! Although it’s the ‘Amazing Race’, the winning team is not the first team to make it to the final location. Instead, teams earn points at each of the roadblock activity sites & the team with the most points wins!
The Scramble
The Scramble activity is a modified version of the Amazing Race event suited to groups tight on time or budget. Similar to the Amazing Race, teams of 6-8 people race around, exploring the local area completing photo missions, collecting scavenger items as well as passing through a roadblock activity site or two.
Survivor
Although this outdoor team building activity is based on the hit TV series, don’t be thrown by the name! None of the team challenges within the Survivor are too physical or fear-inducing. Instead, the Pinnacle Team Events version of Survivor is based on the ‘immunity’ style team challenges where teams compete head-to-head at a series of lateral thinking, problem solving tasks that require the whole team to work together. Think giant puzzles, lateral thinking challenges and a splash of competitive sporting style challenges all thrown in together – there’s something for everyone! At the conclusion of the event, the activity will host a ‘tribal council’ but this comes with a twist! Instead of voting members out of your team you’re able to steal points off the opposing teams. All is fair in love and war!
Mini Beach Olympics
The perfect activity for groups wanting to get outside, have some fun in the sun & play head-to-head in a series of competitive sports. We can tailor this outdoor team building activity to be as physical or as mild as your group requires. Subject to your location, challenges may include: volleyball, dodgeball, cricket, catapults, archery, laser clay shooting and more! As the name suggests, we can host this activity on the beach or simply a large, flat grassed area at your conference venue or local park.
Laser Clay Shooting
This is a great outdoor team building activity for groups who are looking to experience some thrill and excitement. This exciting and engaging game makes use of genuine 12-gauge shotguns that have been adapted to fire laser beams. The launcher fires clays with omni-directional tape; whenever the shooter makes a shot, the beam is reflected back to the gun and recorded on the computerised display. This event will undoubtedly be one of the most thrilling events you’ll do with your team!
If you’re looking to book some outdoor team building activities for your group, or simply want to learn more about how these events work or the benefits, click here now.