If you’ve tried an escape room or two, you know the fun and the excitement of the puzzle-solving under pressure. You also know that your success in figuring out all the clues and getting out the door in time depends on how strong your team is. The better your team communicates and collaborates, and the more you rely on each person’s unique perspectives, the better your chances at success.
While a lot of escape rooms are more permanent installations located in a building or suite that you travel to in order to play, there are amazing escape rooms that can travel to you. These mobile or traveling escape rooms are set up in hotels, conference rooms, or even in event tents wherever and whenever they are needed.
A mobile escape room is similar to setting up an exhibit at a trade show or transforming a rented VFW hall into a reception or birthday party. The escape room team brings the puzzles, clues, and fixtures into the room, and sets up the experience in the space provided. When everyone has completed the room, the pieces can be packed up again, and installed in a new venue when needed.
Trapped Puzzle Rooms has one traveling escape room, our “Clue Dun It!” mystery solving adventure to discover Mr. Boddy’s killer. We can also create an amazing escape room experience for your next corporate event or team building activity. Here are some ways a traveling puzzle room could be a good activity for your workplace or group.
New Hire Orientations
When you have a group of new people you are onboarding to your company, you want them to learn the ropes quickly and feel at home in the workplace. If a new hire is joining an existing team, you want them to get to know their co-workers and form working relationships. Bonding with team members best happens in non-work situations, but it works especially well when the team does something together. The shared experience creates bonds and memories.
At Trapped, we have plenty of escape room ideas. We can theme an escape room around some typical work-related situations if you like. However, many studies show that a break from work increases both productivity and morale. So don’t be afraid to let your new hires flex their creativity and make positive associations with their onboarding experience by having them participate in an escape room together. We can set it up in the HR conference room, for a welcome break from filling out paperwork and watching training videos.
Team-Building Activities
An escape room offers an excellent chance for a team to come together and discover clues, piece together puzzles, and solve the mystery. It can be difficult for a team to work efficiently and synergistically, even if they sit near each other every day. For a team to function well, each member needs to both relate to, and rely upon, the other members. Completing an escape room together requires interpersonal relationships and the combination of each person’s skills and ideas.
If you are like many companies with more than one location, you have teams who work together every day without having met one other. Often, companies get teams together physically once or twice a year to strengthen working relationships and build morale. An escape room can be a fun activity for those face-to-face sessions. Not only do they break the ice by focusing the team’s attention quickly, but they also take away the worry of work performance and hierarchies.
A traveling escape room can be set up in the conference room down the hall, and after the team gets their brains stimulated and their confidence boosted, they will go back to work reinvigorated and with more appreciation for each other.
Hiring and Recruitment
The ability to work as part of a team is a sought-after skill for recruitment. Every potential employee will tell you that they are a great team member, but you really can’t gauge the truth in that until you see them on a team. An escape room is a one-hour activity you can set-up at your recruitment center for an afternoon and ask your potential hires to participate as part of the selection process.
Many top companies do case studies and roleplaying interviews to see how a candidate thinks on their feet and solves problems. Escape rooms can also help with those evaluations. When you’re down to a handful of candidates and in the final rounds, adding an escape room to the assessments can help you see how a candidate performs and how they interact with others.
On-Site Recruiting or Conventions
Additionally, if you are a large company who attends conferences or participates in job fairs or campus recruiting, a traveling escape room can be a great addition to your recruitment efforts. After a brief talk with the recruiter, you can see potential new hires in action at the escape room, playing with other interested candidates. Even if you don’t recommend someone through to the next stage, they have likely had a good time in your on-site escape room and will have positive associations with your organization.
Executive Retreats
Most organizations send their top executives off-site to an annual or quarterly retreat. This time away from daily duties allows them to focus on strategy, analysis, and long-term planning. Executive retreats also bring leadership together and help them understand each other and their respective departments. Importantly, they build camaraderie, ownership, and strategic alignment.
Whether you’re planning your executive retreat at a resort or a luxury hotel or even at a lakeside lodge, Trapped Puzzle Rooms can set up a traveling escape room at your site. If the weather isn’t great for golf or fly-fishing, you can always have a team bond during the escape room. We can even send team members through in multiple groups, and they can compete for the fastest time.
Debriefing after an escape room is essential for information-sharing and bonding. When different groups go through the same experience, they can compare notes and strategies and learn from each other. Debriefing extends the camaraderie, appreciation, and knowledge-building.
Schedule a Traveling Escape Room at Your Site
Contact Trapped Puzzle Rooms to discuss building a custom escape room experience for your team, or having us bring our Clue Dun’ It! A Mobile mystery to you.