Blog

02 Jul 2022 . 8 min read

Gamification and Hybrid Events: the future of team building

In the past few years we’ve seen changes in almost everything around us, and Team Building is no exception to this. We already spoke about the new trends emerging in the industry, and some of them are now consolidating and indicating where the future of Team Building is pointing at. 

Always remaining true to the core mission of reconnecting and bringing people together, it’s becoming clear now that Team Building will be more and more inseparable with Gamification and Hybrid events.

What’s this? In a nutshell, Gamification is about using games and fun activities to tackle strategic and precise objectives. For example, there are games to reinforce team spirit, to build soft skills, or to strengthen leadership and communication in a group.

And hybrid events are about adding a digital touch to the mix! There are now plenty of new options and tools that allow many combinations to organize a Team Building event. A great example are the phygital activities, mixing physical and digital elements together.

Gamification and hybrid events can be a great addition and complement to traditional Team Buildings, and that’s why Tero has integrated Wannapplay, a Brussels-based company specialized in innovative team building and gaming experiences.

Benefits of gamification and hybrid events

There are several advantages of these type of events, compared to the traditional Team Building Events:

  • Flexible and personalized -> The activities can be adapted and customized In terms of duration, group size, budget and format. This makes them ideal for all types and sizes of companies!
  • All year round -> Although the high season for gamification and hybrid events is from December to March, they can be organized indoor and outdoor as well, so are possible to do during all year round.
  • Elastic formats -> Digital, Physical, Phygital, you name it! Hybrid events and gaming activities can be also organized within other team meetings, for example as an icebreaker to start a meeting, or bringing a collaborative touch to a presentation or speech. 
  • No geographic limitations -> Activities can be organized with people from all around the world. Tero recently organized an event for 400 people in 8 different hubs along Belgium. On each hub there were different checkpoints and clues to solve, and at the end of the event all the results were put together and shared in a video for all the participants.
  • More events, but smaller -> The new trend of smaller events, easier to organize, allows also to do them more often. Several events throughout the year can replace the traditional one or two traditional end of year large team building events. These can be organized following a yearly plan, towards a final team objective or red line. Each event or activity is a small step and checkpoint that is shared and tracked, while it contributes to the final common goal, keeping alive throughout the whole year the motivation and engagement of the team.
  • Building the community -> The digital touch allows the participants to share and connect during and after the events, strengthening the community aspect of team building. This is a great asset specially for companies spread around the world, or for teams who don’t share a physical working place.

Along with these benefits, there are also a few challenges in gamification and hybrid events that don’t have to be overlooked, and might turn into opportunities.

It’s true that sometimes people get bored and tired of working in front of screens and in digital environments. A solution for this could be to use the digital tools to enhance, improve and share the real experience, instead of making them the core of the event in itself.  It’s about combining digital with physical and outdoor events, adding value to experiences that help reconnect to the basics.

Another challenge when organizing these types of events for diverse teams is to make the technology accessible for all. All the tools must be user friendly, easy and ready to use both for digital and non-digital oriented participants.

In the end, it’s about adapting and designing the best possible experience for each specific group. And as we said before, this flexibility is one of the most significant benefits of the gamification and hybrid events.

Top 3 of Gamification and Hybrid activities

There are many options of gamification and hybrid activities, and the ideal choice will depend on the objectives and the composition of the group that will take part. Check below our top 3 picks!

1/ VIRTUAL TROPHY

In this game, the participants are like players inside a video game. The city becomes a life-size

game board and each team will have to succeed in several challenges helped with geolocalized  tablets in order to win the trophy! The objective behind the game is to strengthen the collaboration between team members and get them to know each other. There are different checkpoints and missions to achieve, covering different topics, so different team members will take the lead according to their skills. There’s also a fun and competitive side to it, because teams can share and see during the game the scoring and performance of the rest of the teams.

  • GROUP SIZE -> From 5 people onwards (no limit)
  • PRICE RANGE -> From 35€ per person
  • DURATION -> From 1 to 3 hours

2/ ESCAPE BOX

Following the logic of escape rooms, where you have a limited time to get out by solving a global puzzle and several smaller puzzles, in the Escape Box what you have is a backpack that you have to open, layer by layer, enigma after enigma, in the way of a Russian doll. Each riddle is different, and will reveal the capacities of different team members, strengthening in the end team skills such as listening, tasks distribution, leadership, collaboration and  group decision-making.

  • GROUP SIZE -> Up to 200 people
  • PRICE RANGE -> From 35€ per person
  • DURATION -> 1,5 hours

3/ LA MACHINE INFERNALE

This digital escape game presents a scenario in which a team of 5-6 participants must deactivate one by one the 8 modules of an infernal machine following the indications in a letter, in order to save the world! This game uses image recognition and augmented reality, and requires each team member to give their best in order to solve the challenges together!

  • GROUP SIZE -> From 15 to 200 people
  • PRICE RANGE -> 
  • DURATION -> 1,5 hours

All these options are ideal to tackle specific Team Building objectives, while having fun in a game environment, and this is what gamification is about! And adding digital tools to the mix helps increase the engagement and the possibilities of each activity.

That’s why we believe these mixed activities are the future of team building. Gamification and hybrid events are totally aligned with the evolution of jobs and working routines, and have a great potential to bring out the best of each team member and groups as a whole!

Our catalogue of team building events and activities points to this direction, and has been enriched with the integration with Wannapplay. So contact us, and we will be happy to plan together the best games and activities for your teams!