Whether you’re a business leader looking for an innovative way to strengthen cohesion within your team, or an employee keen to enjoy a unique experience with your colleagues, escape games offer an ideal solution. In this article, we present the reasons why escape games have become a must-have activity for corporate team building. We also explore the many benefits they offer, both in terms of collaboration and the development of employee skills and motivation.
Escape games are more than just a source of entertainment. They are designed to stimulate strategic thinking, foster communication and build trust within teams. By engaging in an immersive gaming experience, participants must solve complex puzzles, find hidden clues and work together to successfully escape the room within a given timeframe.
What is a team building activity?
A team building activity is designed to strengthen team spirit and collaboration between the different members of a team. These activities can take a variety of forms, including games, quizzes, competitions, meetings and problem-solving exercises.
These activities can be organized indoors or outdoors, for all team members or for a specific team. In all cases, a team-building activity is designed to create a positive dynamic, encourage exchange and develop participants’ communication, leadership and cohesion skills.
Why organize team building?
There are many reasons why companies organize team-building activities:
- Offering employees a chance to talk to each other outside work, and enabling workers from different sectors to get to know each other and forge strong links.
- Strengthen cohesion between employees through activities that encourage teamwork and enable each person to discover his or her strengths and weaknesses in order to boost collective performance.
- Instill an entrepreneurial culture by highlighting the company’s values and objectives through team-building workshops dedicated to strengthening internal communication, bringing managers and employees together and sharing ideas to foster a sense of belonging to the company.
- To foster the development of collective intelligence within society, enabling each individual to develop their own skills and reach their full potential through activities that serve to value the place of each individual and encourage participants to go beyond their limits.
- Motivate team members and encourage them to take the initiative by using team-building activities that allow employees to express themselves freely, to bring out new leaders and increase their commitment and loyalty to the company.
What are the advantages of escape games?
Escape games bring all players together around the common goal of escaping from the room they’re in. They are ideal for both small and large groups. These games offer many advantages:
Facilitate conflict resolution
Conflicts between employees are an obstacle to entrepreneurial development and prevent smooth communication within a team. What’s more, some people are introverted or shy, and don’t dare break the ice with their colleagues or talk openly about certain problems. Organizing a game of escapism is a great way to encourage communication.
Indeed, in an escape game, each person has a role to play and thus a say. This enhances the value of each person’s role, and provides a setting conducive to exchange and sharing in a relaxed, informal atmosphere. This activity helps to break the ice between people who don’t know each other, and strengthens bonds between participants by offering them an opportunity to talk about subjects outside the professional sphere.
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Improve internal communication
Escape games have become a hit with team building activities thanks to their intrigues, which require fluid and effective communication between participants in order to find a common understanding. All players in a team will have only one desire: to succeed in escaping. However, each team member will have different ideas, which they will have to share with the others to find a common solution.
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Foster cohesion and team spirit
Escape games are first and foremost team games, the resolution of which largely depends on the participants’ ability to collaborate with each other and exploit each individual’s knowledge for the good of the team. This activity teaches participants to put their knowledge to work for the benefit of the team, through good coordination and good listening skills.
In escape games, teamwork is essential. Each participant has a specific role to play, and must carry out his or her mission to solve the puzzle. This requires mutual trust between team members, as well as increased solidarity, to provide a fertile ground for mutual aid and team cohesion.
Stimulate creativity and imagination
A company’s prosperity is closely linked to the creativity of its employees. The more creative and innovative employees are, the more the company can develop and grow thanks to their original ideas and ability to solve problems in new ways. During team building meetings, an escape game offers an ideal activity for developing participants’ creativity.
Optimize time and stress management
When a company goes through a stressful phase, it can affect employee performance and create a hostile environment. Organizing an escape game as a team building activity improves stress management for participants, who will have to work as a team to find solutions quickly within the limited time available. This activity teaches them to control their emotions, test their abilities under pressure, and foster teamwork and sharing in the pursuit of common goals.
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What are the best escape games for team building?
Immersive escape games from Immersia Canada
Immersia Canada has developed captivating escape games for players of all ages, offering a stimulating adventure for participants. These games require teamwork and total immersion through original themes such as time travel, solving criminal investigations or spy missions. The company offers remote animation or on-site games, using special effects and realistic elements to guarantee a multisensory experience and an unforgettable moment for all fans of intellectual challenges.
Virtual team building activities
Ezkapaz’s exciting scenarios
Ezkapaz Canada has created unique escape games, paying particular attention to the details of decoration to provide an immersive atmosphere and realistic scenario. Each room is equipped with the elements needed to take you on a journey to enigmatic places such as a spaceship, a medieval castle or a scientific laboratory.
The scenarios on offer are rich and varied to suit everyone’s preferences and tastes. The puzzles take a variety of forms, from traditional brainteasers to the manipulation of visual elements and sound effects, guaranteeing memorable team challenges. You can also discover escape games designed by Cabinet Mysteriis or Escaparium.
Best applications to create team building activities
If you’d like to organize your own escape games for your next team building event, here are a few suggestions that might help:
The space mission, a journey into space
This escape game is based on a completely immersive scenario in which all participants travel through space in a spaceship that suffers damage and breaks down. Players must work together to find solutions to the riddles posed so that they can return to earth. This activity aims to improve stress management and team spirit through a timeless experience.
Escape the maze, a labyrinth of puzzles
Escape the maze is a popular escape game that places players in a complicated maze with a seemingly impossible escape route. Players have to use their logic and creativity to work together to find solutions to the challenges presented to them, in order to see the light at the end of the tunnel and escape the maze.
The Heist to awaken your inner detective
This escape game features a risky burglary idea where all participants are committed to finding solutions to enter a high-security location without getting caught in order to steal a valuable item. The Heist promotes communication, task coordination and teamwork under pressure by putting players in a challenging and memorable situation.
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Team building services
Kronos Expérience offers original team-building activities that provide a unique experience tailored to your company’s needs. We implement escape games that are suitable for small groups of around 20 people, as well as for large groups of up to 1,000 people.
Our team prepares a variety of customized concepts with a staging that begins well in advance of the activity, using communication tools such as web pages or video messages. We can even enlist the help of members of the management team to provide you with multimedia support related to the chosen theme, such as prophecy or kidnapping. Once the experience is over, we produce a memorable video montage so that you have a collective memory of your team building experience.