Team Building Activities for Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day offers opportunities for workplace team building through themed activities. The personal nature of the holiday provides chances to increase employees' comfort levels with one another and to build on inter-office cooperation. Valentine-themed team building is limited only by managerial and employee creativity.
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Planning
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Team building should begin before activities are decided. Make decision-making the first event. Plan a group brainstorming session to get everybody in the spirit and thinking creatively. As ideas are presented, bounce ideas off each another and fine-tune each possibility. Keep the interactive spirit going by letting everyone have a say in which ideas to use; encourage a vote if there are enough potential activities. Each selected activity can be made the responsibility of one group of workers. This allows team building to begin in advance of Valentine's Day.
Decorating
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Valentine's Day provides an easy visual theme for putting up workplace decorations. Encourage employees to bring in materials they think will be useful, such as flowers, colored paper (lots of red!) and old magazines for collage making. Many women's magazines are ideal for this because of their focus on love and romance. Once the materials have been gathered, allow employees to work together to beautify the office.
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Baking
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A team baking contest is a good way to get people working together in ways they wouldn't normally have the chance to. Break the employees into groups and have them collaborate on making holiday-themed baked goods. Brownie, cookie or cupcake contests lend themselves to being shaped into hearts and elaborately decorated. If the workplace doesn't have adequate baking facilities, workers can meet at someone's home, facilitating bonding in varied environments. On Valentine's Day, the baked goods can be brought in and enjoyed by the combined workforce.
Valentine's Treasure Chest
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There's temptation to borrow the Christmastime favorite "Secret Santa" activity and turn it into a "Secret Valentine" event, however, the romantic nature of Valentine's Day makes that difficult. Team building aims to make people more comfortable with each another; having people assigned to specific co-workers can do the opposite, especially for married employees.
Generalize the gift idea into a "Valentine's Treasure Chest" activity. Have each employee buy three to five small gifts and wrap them at home. Bring the gifts in and add them to a large "treasure chest" provided by management. On Valentine's Day, have workers draw gifts from the chest and see what they've selected. This keeps group gift-receiving intact but cuts out potential awkwardness.
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References
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