10 Ultimate Fun Friday Activities for Teams to Unwind and Enjoy 

1. How Does Organizing Fun Friday Activities Help Boost Team Engagement?

One of the key benefits of establishing fun Friday activities for work colleagues is that they help to alleviate any stress that may have accumulated during the week, giving teammates a chance to reset. It’s also a good way to boost their morale and foster higher levels of engagement

Just as importantly, your fun Friday activities can help improve social interactions within the team, developing interpersonal communication and creating a more dynamic work atmosphere that raises the bar for better collaboration and group problem solving.

2. Top 10 Fun Friday Activities

2.1. Hooray Teams

Hooray Teams is an immersive virtual event platform that offers an excellent lineup of team building activities that are perfect for a fun Friday session. All the games and workshops are run by a professional host, who will handle all the nitty-gritties that come with setting up the event, so your team can enjoy themselves to the full.

There are lots of engaging online games you can play via Hooray Teams, including a simulation of the iconic US quiz show Jeopardy, a variety of themed escape rooms and murder mysteries, and a selection of icebreaker games to get people chatting. 

Most sessions last around 60 minutes and are incredibly easy to arrange. Just select a virtual event from the website, book a time slot, and you’ll be emailed a confirmation link with details of how to connect to your fun Friday activities on Zoom. The company can also offer certain customizations for free if you speak with their reps ahead of time.

2.2. Open Mic

Open mics provide a platform for your staff to show off their musical talents, whether that means doing their best Dua Lipa imitation, singing a pop cover of a rap tune, or even showcasing their own songwriting skills. You can also broaden the open mic sessions out to encompass a more diverse range of performances, including poetry readings, instrumental demos, dance choreography, or comedy routines. 

It’s easy to organize an open mic either virtually using video-conferencing platforms like Zoom or in person utilizing a large meeting room or open-plan office space. You could also see whether any nearby bars might be willing to host your performances if you want to create a relaxed, informal atmosphere where team bonding can flourish.

If you want to add a competition-style element, you can also set up a voting poll via free survey apps such as Doodle or SurveyMonkey where everybody can vote for their favorite act.

2.3. Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts are a perennially popular team-building activity that offer a lot of flexibility in terms of setup and format. The classic version involves splitting your employees into teams and having them solve a series of pre-prepared clues or challenges. These can range from locating certain places to snapping photos with specific items.

If you want to take your team bonding to the streets, you can create a scavenger hunt that takes in local landmarks and hotspots in the surrounding area using software like Goosechase. Alternatively, you can easily limit the parameters of your game to office locations, such as the staff kitchen or the dining canteen.

For remote workers, your scavenger hunt can center on getting people to find items in their homes that answer witty riddles. While online challenges like these may not be as energetically competitive as real-world scavenger hunts, they present a better opportunity for people to introduce aspects of their home life to their colleagues. 

2.4. Charades

While Charades is most commonly played at Christmastime, there’s no reason to limit amusing mimework to once a year. As a fun game to let off steam at the workplace, this game also encourages creativity, quick wits, and plenty of laughs.

Before the event, select topics or ideas that will pique your team’s interests such as books, films, songs, and world events. On Friday, divide your staff up into two or more teams, depending on how many people are present. Let them act out the topics and if the team guesses the correct answer within a minute, they score a point.

A slight variation of the gameplay involves each team writing Charades for the opposing group. This way, nobody has to be responsible for coming up with all the mimes solo.

2.5. Truth or Dare

Most people think of truth or dare as a game for kids, but it’s very easy to spruce it up as an engaging team building activity for adults, more as an icebreaker to stimulate conversations between work colleagues. To kick things off, choose somebody at random to start, asking them whether they would like to answer a question about themselves (truth) or perform an action (dare). Once that person has chosen and completed their truth or dare, they then select the next person who must undergo the challenge.

The most important thing is to remind everybody beforehand that the truths and dares should be appropriate for the workplace. For example, some office dares might include sharing an embarrassing selfie or doing a TikTok dance, while truths might be things like “What is the worst chat-up line you’ve ever used?” or “What’s a country you’ve been to that you would never go back to?”

2.6. Dress Up

Many offices have introduced casual Fridays in the workplace to create an informal, relaxed atmosphere in the lead up to the weekend, but you can ratchet up the fun by encouraging a more creative Friday dress code.

There are so many options and variations to consider. For example, you could focus on reliving the fashions of yesteryear, such as the flower power of the ‘60s or the Jazz Age party frocks of the Roaring ‘20s. Alternatively, you could go for a theme like “under the sea”, movie characters, or something more quirky such as fast food.

Bear in mind that weekly dress up themes can become a bit exhausting for colleagues, so it might be worth limiting your fashion fun to once a month, perhaps to fit in with an annual celebration, such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, or International Women’s Day.

2.7. Trivia 

Trivia games tend to be one of the most popular staff-bonding pursuits. After all, who doesn’t enjoy putting their obscure knowledge to the test while also getting to know their colleagues a little better?

There are lots of ways to organize your trivia contest. You could create your own list of Q&As for an engaging in-office session or if you are looking to have a virtual Fun Friday, reach out to a team building platform like Hooray Teams to organize virtual trivia events. It's always a good idea to try different themes and  throw in multimedia wherever you can to keep people engaged. Try including picture rounds or music excerpts for added entertainment.

2.8. Potluck Lunches

Potluck lunches can be a really great way to incorporate your diversity and inclusion goals into your fun Friday activities. Each week can feature cuisine from a different culture, or you can simply ask people to bring dishes that remind them of their childhood or a treasured holiday trip. This will prompt staff to learn more about one another’s backgrounds and traditions, all while enjoying a delicious buffet of flavors.

The key to a successful potluck is to make sure you have a mixture of appetizers, sides, mains, and desserts. Ask people what kind of food item they intend to bring beforehand, so that you can make sure there’s a good balance of dishes.

Don’t forget the beverages! Either the office can supply liquid refreshments, or you can assign a few people to focus on bringing drinks instead of eats. These can be purely soft drinks or alcoholic drinks, depending on your office policy.

2.9. Two Truths & A Lie

In this game of wit and deception, each player takes it in turn to tell two truths and a lie about themselves. It’s then up to everybody else to determine which statements are the truths and which one is the lie. Make sure you keep track of how everybody votes each time, so that at the end you can reveal who is the best at separating fact from fiction.

Aside from the gently competitive element of the game, Two Truths and a Lie also offers an opportunity for teams to get to know one another more personally, including some of the more unusual interests and experiences. The best part is this game can be played in-persona or online so it’s a great choice for remote teams to enjoy as well.

2.10. Blind Drawing Game

If what you want in a fun Friday activities is something that guarantees plenty of hilarity as well as a test of communication skills, this is the activity for you. 

Divide participants into teams of about 5. One person from each team is selected as the drawer, who is blindfolded with a scarf (or you can just trust them to close their eyes). The rest of the group then pull a slip of paper with an item written upon it from a hat. Once the one-minute timer has started, the goal is for the team to direct the drawer’s pen/pencil/marker to move along the paper/whiteboard, in an attempt to get them to draw the item without directly revealing what the object is.

Once the time is up, the blindfold comes off and the drawer has to guess what they were meant to be drawing. Afterwards, it can also be helpful to have a discussion about what worked and what didn’t, as these lessons can be taken away and applied to workplace collaboration.

3. FAQs

3.1. What can be done for fun with Friday?

Fun Friday activities can be as simple as organizing a themed dress code or as involved as arranging a third-party hosted game. It really depends on how much emphasis you want to put on creating a positive workplace culture that encourages team bonding and stress-relieving downtime.

3.2. How do you organize fun Friday activities?

The most important thing is to make sure everybody is given clear details about what is taking place. Particularly with activities like a potluck lunch or an open mic session, make sure you tell everybody well in advance, so that they have time to adequately prepare their contribution.