It’s pretty simple, if you’re working non-stop around the clock, you’re going to burn out. In the workplace, exhaustion and mental fatigue rear their ugly heads in untold ways – but studies have shown it definitely leads to decreased motivation, increased errors, and dulled critical thinking.
If you’re exhausted at work or manage people who are racing around the clock to keep the company fires burning, the answer is pretty simple: you just need to take, or encourage, more breaks. Over the years, gaming has been proven to be an effective way to stay in the office, but also break from the cognitive demands of the daily grind. For managers, gaming is a great way to maintain morale, encourage team camaraderie, and keep people fresh.
But when choosing to either lobby for adding a game room in your office, or develop one for your staff, where do you begin. Darting down to Costco and picking up a foosball table is easy, but is it the best choice? Well, to give you a hand, we’ve compiled a list of things to consider when adding games and gaming to your office place.
And, hey, if you’ve had a hard quarter, or are looking to bring in a surprise employee reward, you don’t have to be overly strategic about it. With Dolly, we can help get a game of almost any conceivable size to your office same day. Let us sweat the logistics – you just worry about taking a break, and having some fun.
How to Choose Office Games
Location. How separate is your play space from your workspace? Is the table right outside the CEO’s door on is it near the break room? If you have a game, you want people to actually be able to play. So give them not only a game, but a place to enjoy it, relax, and get a little break from work (and the prying eye of the boss).
Space. This is an easy one. Do you have the space for a pool table, shuffleboard, or ping-pong table. Like any furniture, your game has to fit your space. But remember, games invite interactive experiences, so they tend to need more space than the mere physical space they take up.
Storage. Despite the space, can you pack up, fold up the game when you’re done and put it away? Depending on your space, choosing a game based on what you can break out or hide away is an important consideration.
Noise. Some games are just really loud. When a bar drowns out the noise with other sounds, you don’t notice it. In a quiet office, it can be jarring. While you want to invite interaction and fun, you don’t want to annoy or disrupt an entire team with the thwack thwack of a ping pong ball all day if the proximity to the game is nil.
Now that you have a few considerations in mind, let’s look at popular games to consider for your office game room.
Foosball. Sure, it’s everywhere – but it’s popular for a reason. Easy to learn and play, and great for teams, foosball is a timeless and fun team building game.
Pool Table. Among the best things about a pool table is how many different games you can play one-on-one or with multiple teams. It turns one game into dozens and doesn’t require a particular number of people to play. Plus, it maintains a sense of classic cool other games are wont to replicate.
Ping Pong. Easy to move, easy to store, minimal upkeep. All benefits that make a ping pong table a quick affordable decision. But remember what we said above about noise? Yeah, unless it’s placed someplace dedicated, and maybe out of the way, the noise of long rallies may drive people crazy.
Corn Hole. A tailgating favorite that’s exploded in popularity in recent years, people love corn hole because it’s easy to learn and easy to play. Plus, you can also have a lot of fun with your boards – branding, decorating and adorning them with all sorts of creative expression.
Shuffleboard. The best pubs all have shuffleboard tables, the long, wooden, salted games you see against the walls opposite the flat-screens showing Sunday football. This game requires a bit more precision, and a bit more of a learning curve, but like air-hockey it has a cool factor that can’t be ignored – and…it’s remarkably addicting.
To realize the benefits of any of these games, you have to play them. Encourage idle time as part of your culture, or discuss including more team building time with your superiors. Dolly makes it easy to get up and running without an all-hands strategic planning meeting. Just use our handy-dandy estimator to get a fast guaranteed quote on moving your office game today.
Dolly helps you move on your schedule and at an affordable price. Book now and see the difference: https://dolly.com.
