Boost your team's morale and productivity by hosting team building events or professional skills development classes with CourseHorse. From fun social events and wellness classes to advanced training in specific applications, CourseHorse offers a wide range of customizable events that can help your team become a more cohesive unit.

Key Insights

Team building events can range from fun social activities to professional skills development programs. They can be organized in person, online, or as a hybrid event based on the team's requirements.
CourseHorse offers a variety of team building activities including trivia nights, escape rooms, games, arts & crafts classes, cooking classes, tasting & mixology classes, wellness classes, and professional development classes.
The wellness and relaxation courses offered by CourseHorse help employees manage workplace stress healthily and productively, preventing burnout and improving the working environment.
CourseHorse also provides corporate training in key areas like technology, marketing, and design, as well as software-specific training in applications like Microsoft Excel, Adobe InDesign, and Figma.
Soft skill training courses are available to improve communication, collaboration, and conflict management among team members.
All events can be customized to fit the team's needs and CourseHorse takes care of all shipping and logistics once the list of participants is finalized.

Discover the Best Team Building Events

It can be difficult to keep a team of employees working together smoothly, especially if many work from home or in different departments. Maybe you are looking for a way to get team members to socialize and become closer, or maybe you are looking to reward them for a job well done. Perhaps the team has just formed, and you want them to meet their coworkers in a light-hearted and enjoyable environment. Regardless of your aims, you can help your team become a more cohesive unit by hosting a team building event, activity or class through CourseHorse. These events are enjoyable and easy-to-organize ways to bring your team members closer together or to provide them with valuable skills training that they can use to become more productive members of your workforce. Read on to learn more about the advantages that these events provide and just a small sampling of the massively customizable options available for you to choose from.

What is a Team Building Event?

A team building event can be any group activity you organize for members of your team or workforce, making them a very versatile way to accomplish a wide range of goals. They can be fun social events, or they can be professional skills development courses. You can hold competitive online competitions or host an in-person paint and sip course. A team building event can be highly structured or laid back and casual, and that degree of customization is one of the reasons these events are so popular. No matter what kind of team building event you are hoping to host, CourseHorse is here to help you plan and execute the perfect team building event.

Why Host a Team Building Event?

As mentioned, there are a lot of different reasons that you may want to host a team building event for your co-workers or employees. The most common reason is to make your employees feel appreciated by hosting an event that provides them a fun and laid-back atmosphere to socialize with each other. These events can range from trivia nights to art classes since the whole point of the event is to simply give your team members a chance to participate in a fun group activity. These events can also be dedicated icebreaker activities for new teams that need to start getting to know each other.

These events are also a good way to build team morale and help team members and employees manage workplace stress. Not only are they relaxing ways to unwind at the end of a long work week, but they can also be customized to focus on things like teaching mindfulness activities or stretching exercises that participants can learn to help them retain less muscle stress. These events can help make your offices a happier, more productive workplace, and they are very easy to run in digital spaces.

Finally, you can opt to hold corporate training events to help your team learn vital workplace skills. These team building sessions are ideal if you are looking to provide your employees with the training they need to become more productive workers or to tackle more elaborate tasks and projects. These events can cover things like training in specific applications or tools (like Microsoft Excel or the Adobe Creative Cloud), generalized professional skills (like digital marketing to Python programming) or transferable social and interpersonal skills (like communication or conflict management). The lessons in these programs are highly customizable, so you can be assured that your employees will learn the vital workplace skills you hope they learn.

In-person or Online?

When it comes to planning a team building event, one of the first things you’ll need to consider is whether to host the event in person, online or as a hybrid event. Each kind of event has its advantages and disadvantages, so you’ll want to give it some serious thought before committing to a specific type of event. Largely, it is most likely to depend on the kind of event you are hosting, the team you are bringing together and the outcomes you hope to achieve.

In-person events can be ideal for socializing and casual interactions between members of your team, since they will be in the same room and will be able to mingle amongst themselves. Classes and other hands-on seminars are also very popular in-person choices since they allow attendees to work directly with instructors and see the work that others are doing. This is especially relevant for professional development events since having an in-person instructor can go a long way to making the class a success. The drawback to in-person courses is that they are harder to organize and more likely to depress attendance due to outside forces. Some team members who may want to attend may be unable to do so when a commute and trip away from home are added to the equation. In addition, physical space is a limitation of in-person events. While some spaces can host as many as a hundred people, some classes may be limited to less than two dozen, meaning that if you have large teams, you may have to reconsider your options.

Online team building events solve many of these problems by making it incredibly easy for all your team members to attend the event without leaving their homes. This can increase attendance and make it easier for your team members who might otherwise have responsibilities that prevent them from traveling to an in-person event to attend. Online events also expand on the kind of team building activities you can host since the virtual space makes it easier to run many different games, including virtual escape rooms and team contests. In addition, if you host a skills class, participants might appreciate learning how to cook, do art, or work with a professional application from their kitchens and offices. The drawback to these classes is that online events can feel less personal, particularly if the event is meant to serve as an icebreaker since you will most frequently interact with a wall of digital faces (many of whom might not have cameras). In addition, it is easier to become distracted during an online event, and Zoom fatigue is a real thing that can impact your team member's ability to participate at the end of a long day.

Hybrid events can address some logistics challenges by allowing some team members to attend in person while others participate over Zoom. This can also make it easier for everyone on your team to attend since participants with other obligations can join in a digital space. The downside to hybrid events is that keeping organized can become a bit chaotic, especially if it is a hybrid skills class. Not all spaces and courses are necessarily conducive to being hosted in a hybrid format, though you can work with your instructor to ensure that you can meet your team's needs.

Kinds of Team Building Events

There are a few broad types of team building events that you can organize via CourseHorse. Each of these events will serve a different purpose and be ideally suited for different teams, contexts and situations, so you should consider what you are hoping to get out of your team event as you are exploring the options available to you. However, regardless of the type of event you choose, you’ll be working alongside an experienced event planner who can work with you to tweak elements of the event and ensure that you are getting your money’s worth.

Trivia

Bar trivia is a popular after-work activity that encourages people to get together and socialize as they attempt to answer trivia questions in a low-stakes, relaxed environment. These events are structured enough to encourage participants from everyone involved, but they are loose enough events that everyone can still have fun. However, these events might not seem like immediately ideal team events since they are held at bars, which may not be something everyone on your team is interested in, and they are very limited in terms of space (and the more people you bring, the less comfortable it becomes). Online trivia events solve these problems by giving your team a private, digital space to play a competitive trivia game.

In a CourseHorse Private Virtual Trivia event, your team will break up and compete as smaller teams to determine who amongst you has the most trivia knowledge. Each trivia night is hosted by an experienced facilitator with the skills needed to get your team members invested in the game and playing along. Most trivia nights run for between sixty and ninety minutes and consist of four rounds: a normal round, an image round, a music round and a surprise round. The questions are all written by CourseHorses’s expert team of writers, and you can reach out to have your experience customized with questions tailored to your team or your event.

CourseHorse offers a Virtual Private Trivia event that covers all manners of general knowledge trivia and is likely to be a crowd-pleaser for any group or team. This event will test your team's eclectic knowledge and is a great way for team members to learn more about each other. If you are looking for more specific trivia options, CourseHorse offers a wide range of specific trivia events. These include the more narrow pop culture or academic trivia, like Music Trivia, Movie Trivia or Human History Trivia.There are also socially conscious trivia events, like Black History Month Trivia, Women’s History Month Trivia, and Pride Month Trivia. Finally, CourseHorse offers more specific pop culture trivia events, such as Seinfeld Trivia or Game of Thrones Trivia.

Escape Rooms

Escape rooms have become an increasingly popular choice for team building activities. They are fun and atmospheric events, and they can help develop communication, lateral thinking and problem-solving skills. These structured, puzzle-solving experiences can be a wonderful way to get team members working together and socializing as they attempt to solve the room’s mysteries and escape. The drawback to these events is that escape rooms can only hold so many people at a time, which can be restrictive for larger teams, and they can be booked up fairly far in advance, so you have less control over when you are going to hold your team building event. CourseHorse’s virtual escape rooms solve these issues by taking all of the puzzle-solving elements of a professionally designed escape room and translating them into a digital space.

In a CourseHorse Virtual Escape Room, your team will be broken up into small groups and tasked with racing to solve puzzles, gather clues and resolve the mystery in any of CourseHorse’s expansive catalog of events. These events are all led by experienced facilitators who have years of experience proctoring escape rooms and working in the digital space to ensure that your team members are engaged and active participants in the event. These events tend to run for about an hour, giving team members ample time to spend with each other solving puzzles and trying to piece together the solution required to complete the room. This can be a low-stakes, small-group activity, or it can be a competitive event where teams compete to complete the room as quickly as possible.

CourseHorse offers a wide variety of themes for its escape room events. Some of the events mirror traditional escape rooms, like the Murder Mystery, where participants will race against time to stop a murderer from striking again or the Arctic Circle escape room, wherein participants will try to survive a crash in the Arctic wilderness. There are also nostalgia-driven escape rooms, where attendees will need to flex their knowledge of previous decades, in the Escape the 90s and Escape the 2000s events. There are holiday events, like an Escape the Office Holiday Party for Christmas and a Haunted House for Halloween. Finally, CourseHorse runs light-hearted pop culture-themed events, like a Marvel Avengers-themed room and a Jumanji-themed event. Several of these events are available in truncated versions if your team is short on time.

Games and Icebreakers

If you are looking for a more laid-back, interactive experience for your team, CourseHorse offers a wide range of virtual games that can be set up as full events or played as part of another group event. These games range from simple events like Two Truths and a Lie to complex scavenger hunts. These events can be used to give your team a fun and exciting evening, and they are great ways to bring new teams together for icebreaker games and activities, which can help team members become comfortable speaking with each other and learning more about one another. Regardless of why you want to host a group game night, CourseHorse can help to ensure that you are getting the most out of your team members' time and engagement.

Getting new teams to come together can be difficult, so CourseHorse offers a dedicated Virtual Icebreaker: Getting to Know Your Teammates event. This session comprises a series of games and interview questions that will see participants learning more about each other and trying to form bonds over shared interests and unique experiences. This event is hosted by an experienced facilitator who will work to ensure that everyone on the team is engaged and invested in learning about their colleagues. A similar, more structured option is to hold a Virtual Scavenger Hunt, in which participants will be broken up into teams and tasked with decoding prompts and riddles to create a list of household items (and some concepts) before the other teams complete theirs. These scavenger hunts are a great team building exercise as they require their participants to work together on multiple tasks simultaneously and learn about each other.

For a more tactile gaming experience, you can sign up for the Virtual Brick Building Team Challenge. In this event, participants will receive LEGO® bricks shipped directly to their homes and play a series of games that utilize the bricks. These will include artistic games, in which teams design and build scenes and objects, and games wherein participants guide each other through blindly building an object. These games can help develop leadership and communication skills and help participants become better at parsing and following instructions. These games can be combined into Virtual Game Show Bingo or Virtual Team Olympics events. In both events, participants will play multiple minigames to compete for prizes and accolades.

Arts & Crafts Group Classes

If you aren’t interested in a competitive event, you can offer your employees a fun evening of artistic expression in one of CourseHorse’s Arts and Crafts events. These events are great ways to provide your employees with a laid-back atmosphere in which they can flex their creative muscles and create something they can display in their homes or office. These are all beginner-friendly art classes, so no one will need to worry about the difficulty level or their own level of experience. In addition, CourseHorse can provide your participants with all the supplies they need, shipped directly to their homes, ensuring that everyone has the tools they need to complete a finished art project.

If you want a traditional art course, you can sign up for either the Virtual Watercolor or Virtual Acrylic painting classes. In these programs, attendees will be guided through the process of painting vibrant scenes in either watercolor or acrylic paints, and they will learn how to approach painting like an artist. These classes are all taught by experienced art instructors who are equipped to guide participants of all skill levels through the process of starting, shading and completing a masterful work of art. If you are looking for a more laid-back process, you can consider a Virtual Paint and Sip Party. In this low-stakes event, everyone will have paint and a canvas, with an image already stenciled on, shipped to them so they can enjoy a drink, paint a picture and socialize throughout the evening. The event is customizable, so you can choose from a collection of images offered by CourseHorse or have your own image stenciled onto the canvas. CourseHorse will also include a bottle of wine in the package for an additional fee, making it even easier for your attendees to enjoy the event.

If you are interested in the plastic arts, you can schedule a Virtual Clay Hand Building session, in which your participants will mold a bowl using air-drying clay or a Virtual Candle Making Workshop, where participants will make their own scented candles. During these workshops, participants will receive guided instruction on the finer arts of making bowls and candles for around the home, and the skills they learn will be able to help them continue making their own home goods for years to come. One of CourseHorse’s most popular classes is the Virtual Terrarium Workshop. In this event, participants will learn how to build a living work of art using succulents, mosses and rocks. This course will provide participants with all the supplies they need to build a starter terrarium and practical advice on expanding upon their first creation. This means that the workshop will be valuable for participants who want to learn new skills that they can develop into a hobby and participants who just want to complete a unique, one-off art project.

Cooking Group Classes

Another option for practical, enjoyable skills courses that can serve as a rewarding team building activity is a cooking class. In these workshops, participants will learn the art of cooking meals, desserts, sides and breads from their home kitchen. These classes are all taught by expert chefs with years of culinary and teaching experience to share with participants. These courses also serve the added bonus of ensuring that your participants end the event with something to eat for themselves or share with their families and guests, which can make the event all the more appealing to your team members. CourseHorse handles all of the logistics of shipping necessary ingredients to your team members' homes, so you won’t have to worry about anyone being left out of the event or missing an ingredient (perishables can’t be shipped, but CourseHorse packages all include gift cards to cover the cost of things like meat, eggs and milk).

If you want to provide your team members with a meal they can eat at the end of the course and later replicate at their own homes, consider the Virtual Pizza from Scratch course. In this team-building workshop, participants will learn how to create traditional-style Italian pizza dough from scratch and the process of proofing, rolling, topping and baking the pizza. The course aims to teach students how to create a simple Italian pizza, but the ingredients and toppings can be modified to each participant's liking (there is also a gluten-free option available, but participants will need to provide their own flour). An alternative option is the Virtual Sushi Making classes, in which participants will learn the art of preparing sushi rice and hand-rolling various styles of sushi. Sushi is an incredibly versatile dish, and participants are encouraged to experiment with different toppings and fillings throughout the course and throughout their later attempts at the dish.

CourseHorse also offers a wide selection of different dessert and treat-making courses for planners who aren’t looking at making a meal out of the event. These include the Virtual Apple Pie Workshop, the Virtual Donut Making Workshop and the Candy Making: Truffles and Brittles Workshop. These programs all teach participants how to make delicious desserts, breakfast sweets or candies in their home kitchen, and each course is open-ended enough that participants will be able to easily start modifying the recipes on their own. These courses can also be paired with brief virtual mixology lessons to let your attendees create a signature cocktail to enjoy alongside their dessert like an appletini to enjoy with a slice of apple pie.

Tasting & Mixology Group Classes

If you think cooking a meal or making a dessert might be too much effort, you can instead opt to simplify things and host a tasting or mixology session. These courses are great ways to make your team feel rewarded for a job well done, and they can easily approximate the experience of taking your coworkers out for a round of drinks at happy hour. The tasting events are all easy-to-follow lessons led by experienced instructors who understand the complicated process of building an exquisite tasting menu. The mixology classes are taught by experienced bartenders who understand the subtleties of mixing a perfect cocktail, and all participants will receive the supplies, syrups and garnishes they need to start creating their own delicious cocktails. Participants will need to supply their own spirits, but participants will receive a gift card to cover the costs of the alcohol.

In the Virtual Wine and Cheese Tasting Workshop, participants will have a pair of wines and a pair of cheeses shipped directly to their homes. CourseHorse’s expert facilitator will then provide them with lessons in the processes that go into making and refining wine and cheeses and the ways in which experienced sommeliers and cheesemongers perfect the art of pairing wines and cheeses together. Participants will receive a French Sauvignon Blanc and an Argentinian Malbec, and New York’s famous Murray’s Cheese provides a French Goat Cheese and a Sharp Cheddar (though other rotating options are available). There is also a Beers Around the World event that serves as a virtual pub crawl, seeing participants sample and enjoy a wide range of different beers from across the globe.

In a Virtual Mixology course, participants will learn the art and science behind cocktail making and a few easy, delicious drinks they can start making at home or at social events. No prior experience is necessary, and all of the classes are taught by an experienced bartender who knows all the intricate subtleties of making a refreshing cocktail. In the standard version of the course, everyone will receive the ingredients and garnishes to prepare an Old Fashioned, a mint julep, and a ginger lime margarita. If you are looking for other mixology options, CourseHorse also offers seasonal courses, like a Springtime Mixology course, a Winter Mixology course, and a Pride Mixology course. Each of these courses covers different cocktails, and CourseHorse can work with you and your team to customize the menu to suit the palettes and desires of your participants.

Wellness Group Classes

Work can be stressful and difficult, and while fun, sociable activities like virtual trivia or a bread-baking class can help with these issues, they aren’t a replacement for dedicated wellness and stress management courses. These courses offer you a way to help your employees manage workplace stress healthily and productively, which prevents burnout and ensures that they are prepared to continue managing their physical well-being. These courses can be great one-off events to help your team members burn some stress, or they can be regular parts of your work week to steadily improve your working environment.

CourseHorse offers a range of wellness and relaxation courses, including a Rough Day Recharge seminar and a Virtual Chair Stretching Seminar. In both of these classes, participants will learn a series of practical desk and chair stretches that they can use to invigorate their muscles, build energy and release the tension they build up over a day of sitting at their computers doing their jobs. There is also a Guided Mindfulness Seminar for helping address the mental side of your health, alongside a Mindful Meditation Seminar for teaching more advanced mindfulness techniques and mental health lessons. If you want to make these kinds of seminars a regular part of your team’s work week, consider the Virtual Weekly Decompression for High Stress Teams seminar, which combines all of these different aspects of stress management and wellness into a single, weekly event.

Professional Development Group Classes

While they may not be the most exciting team building activities, sometimes you must provide your employees or team members with professional development training. CourseHorse offers a wide range of corporate training seminars in key professional areas such as technology, marketing and design that will be essential to the success of your business or project. There are also corporate training seminars that focus on using specific applications that are common across various fields. Finally, CourseHorse offers a range of soft skill training courses to help your team improve at communication, collaboration and conflict management.

CourseHorse offers focused corporate training opportunities for using industry-standard applications like Microsoft Excel, Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, or Figma. These courses are beginner-friendly classes that will introduce your team to the latest versions of the applications or get your team up to date on the newest features and functionalities of those applications. If you are looking for training that casts a wider net, you can expand the training to be more field-specific, such as in Graphic Design, Python or Machine Learning. These generalist courses are excellent ways to provide your teams with essential skills needed to succeed at their jobs, making their workflow more productive and less stressful.

In addition to targeted skills training courses, CourseHorse also offers various professional development courses designed to help your employees become more confident communicators as they develop important soft skills applicable in many different business scenarios. In the Virtual Team Building Improv Workshop, participants will learn basic improv theater skills to learn how to communicate and work together on creative endeavors. Similarly, in the Virtual Public Speaking Through Stand-up seminar, participants will learn valuable public speaking and storytelling skills as they build their confidence in speaking in front of large audiences. Finally, if your group can meet in person at CourseHorse’s NYC facility, The Art of Conversation course will help them learn to engage in the vital social networking essential for anyone hoping to make a splash in the corporate world.

Book Today with CourseHorse

If any of these exciting events sound like something you want to host for your team members, contact CourseHorse today. You’ll be put in contact with a professional event planner who will be available to work with you throughout the entire scheduling process. Events can be customized to fit your needs, and CourseHorse is more than happy to help work with you to design the perfect team-building event for your office. All of the shipping and logistics will be handled once you have a firm list of participants, but you can add or drop attendees as schedules change. Once you hand the information off to CourseHorse, they’ll take care of everything, and you’ll be free to relax and enjoy the team building event.

Team Building Activities

Virtual Private Trivia

Virtual Wine & Cheese Workshop

Virtual Feud Frenzy

Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery

Virtual Terrarium Workshop

Virtual Clay Hand Building

Virtual Game Show Bingo

Virtual Escape Room: The '90s

Virtual Brick Building Team Challenge

Virtual Mixology Workshop

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Virtual Escape Room: Expedition to the North Pole

Virtual Terrarium Workshop

Virtual Clay Hand Building

Virtual Paint & Sip Party

Virtual Art & Meditation

Virtual Watercolor Workshop

Virtual Brick Building Team Challenge

Virtual Candle Making

Virtual Grow Your Own Home Garden

Virtual Marbled Resin Cutting Board

Virtual Mosaic Tray Workshop

Virtual Watercolor Workshop

Virtual Workshop: Moss Wall Art

Virtual Pizza from Scratch

Virtual Mochi Ice Cream Making

Virtual New York Style Pretzels

Virtual Truffle Making Workshop

Virtual Hummus Making

Virtual Mixology Workshop

Virtual Ice Cream Making Workshop

Virtual Gnocchi Making

Virtual Hot Sauce from Scratch

Virtual Sushi Making Workshop

Virtual Bread Making: Focaccia Art Workshop

Virtual Escape Room: The '90s

Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery

Virtual Escape Room: The Office Holiday Party

Virtual Escape Room: Pirate Treasure Hunt

Virtual Escape Room: Expedition to the North Pole

Virtual Escape Room: The Arctic Circle

Virtual Escape Room: Escape from the '70s

Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery (45 minutes)

Virtual Escape Room: Escape from the '80s

Virtual Escape Room: The Final Frontier

Virtual Escape Room: Marvel Avengers

Virtual Escape Room: Monsters & Ghouls

Virtual Private Trivia

Virtual Trivia: Timewarp

Virtual Trivia: Black History Month

Virtual Trivia: Music

Virtual Trivia: Movies

Virtual Trivia: Cuisine

Virtual Trivia: Friends

Virtual Trivia: Nerdy

Virtual Trivia: Pride Month

Virtual Trivia: True Crime

Virtual Icebreaker: Get to Know Your Teammates

Virtual Trivia: The Office

Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery

Virtual Brick Building Team Challenge

Virtual Icebreaker: Get to Know Your Teammates

Virtual Game Show Bingo

Virtual Mini Game Showdown

Virtual Pictionary

Virtual Team Olympics

Virtual Scavenger Hunt

Virtual Private Trivia

Virtual Feud Frenzy

Virtual Escape Room: The '90s

Virtual Escape Room: Expedition to the North Pole

Virtual Wine & Cheese Workshop

Virtual Mixology Workshop

Virtual Chocolate Tasting

Virtual Wine Tasting Workshop

Virtual Mixology Workshop

Virtual Belgian Beer Tasting

Virtual Tasting: Olive Oil & Balsamic Vinegar

Virtual American Whiskey Tasting