More often than ever, smart companies are embracing ice breaker games to help foster better communication and teamwork among their employees.
A popular new trend is using escape rooms and mystery games as company ice breakers. Read on to learn more about some local options for ice-breaker games that your crew can attend. We can even bring a game to your workplace!
Escape Rooms Available at Trapped Puzzle Rooms
Escape room challenges like those at Trapped Puzzle Rooms provide fresh, fun, and engaging ways to approach your company’s team-building goals. Our escape room experiences allow teams of employees to work as a unit to achieve a common goal by working together to find clues, piece together puzzles, and solve their room’s mystery before time runs out. Trapped Puzzle Rooms takes icebreaker games to the next level of challenging teamwork fun with themed rooms like our Spies vs Spies where teams race against each other in identical puzzle rooms. The goal is to catch the villainous mole sharing secrets with the enemy!
Face off against another team in this competitive and cooperative puzzle experience. The Heist escape room is a detective experience that puts your team up to the task of recovering stolen artwork within the heavily guarded art gallery of eccentric millionaire Stephen Pillager.
In our Fire & Ice room, your Queen finds herself in exile as the North has gained power, posing a threat to the entire realm. It’s up to you and your fellow knights to protect the kingdom!
Our “A Very Potter” escape room takes your team to one of the world’s most famous schools of Wizardry. With the Headmaster gone and a new regime ready to take over, you need to get into the Headmaster’s office and retrieve the Elder Wand before it’s too late! We even offer the Midwest’s first escape house, the 90-minute multi-level experience “The Legend of Lyndale House.” As you can see, Trapped offers uniquely themed puzzle rooms that take you into a world of mystery, challenge, and fun.
Why Escape Rooms Make Good Icebreaker Games
Especially if you have a new team, whether through creating a new project, a restructuring of duties, or adding new employees, it’s important to get the team to know each other and bond as a group. That’s what icebreaker games are for.
If you have ever been on a team, whether it’s in the context of sports or on-the-job in a workplace environment, you already have a sense of how important that feeling of being connected and engaged as a team member is, and how it contributes to being more productive with the job at hand. Having fun and laughing together can further affect team dynamics, resulting in greater job satisfaction, team cohesion, and work productivity. And it isn’t rocket science.
It’s just a good, old-fashioned human psychology. When it comes to fun, engaging, and challenging teamwork in a safe and structured setting, Trapped Puzzle Rooms has you covered!
Elements of puzzle rooms that lend themselves directly to corporate team building include:
- Stimulating creative thinking.
- Getting individual group members to think “outside the box.”
- Encouraging communication between individual team members.
- Encouraging group discussion.
- Meaningful interaction between team members.
- Playing to each participant’s strengths.
- Facilitating a bond between team members.
- Allowing team members to step outside their comfort zones and take chances safely.
- Giving the team an opportunity to observe and learn about each member’s strengths and limitations.
- Building confidence for the team as a whole.
- Helping strengthen a sense of belonging.
- Instilling a sense of fun and anticipation for working together as a team again.
According to psychologytoday.com, “Brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops, too.” Escape rooms are fun, thus priming the brain for learning.
We learn better when we feel more engaged as part of a team, and we tend to feel more motivated and less stressed, which allows our brains to better conceptualize and retain information. Here are just a few of the critical areas that Trapped Puzzle Rooms’ experiences make good icebreaker games and can benefit your workgroup:
- Communication
- Active listening
- Positive thinking
- Creative and innovative thinking
- Teamwork
- Rapport and trust among team members
- Productivity
More Fun = Better Productivity
Companies from large to small are beginning to recognize the value of the puzzle room experience in corporate team-building. And in today’s competitive marketplace, we’re all looking for that edge that can take our workforce to the next level of job satisfaction and productivity.
Forbes.com says, “Our brains need passion, play, and release at work. They’re essential to keeping us emotionally connected and engaged, to feel part of the tribe, to blow off steam and to create experiences.” Giving your employees the opportunity to have fun with an activity such as a puzzle room isn’t taking time away from their productivity, it’s building it.
So, what type of companies have used puzzle rooms successfully in their team-building efforts? Here are a handful of the more recognizable names, to give you an idea:
- Sony
- Pfizer
- Apple
- Cisco
- Bosch
- Visa
- J.P. Morgan
- Volvo
Trapped Puzzle Rooms is one of the Midwest’s most popular escape room experiences, so book your group’s rooms today to ensure you get the date and time slots for your schedule.
Trapped Puzzle Rooms have locations in Uptown Minneapolis, the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Escape to other worlds where your team can put their sleuthing savvy, problem-solving skills, and teamwork to the test. Contact us today for bookings and more information on how Trapped Puzzle Rooms can help facilitate your company’s team-building through icebreaker games.
Our friendly and helpful staff members are on hand to answer questions and guide your group through the process. We look forward to helping you to reach your team-building goals.