Fun Contest Ideas for Workplace & Office

Office games and activities are integral to corporate culture. Competently organised fun contests for employees are also effective tools for extending staff loyalty to companies, developing necessary competencies among the employees of your business clients, and so much more.

Reasons for running contests at a workplace or office

Workplace contests are great ideas to engage employees and cultivate their loyalty to their employer. There are three main objectives for coming up with incentive contests for employees:

• Encouraging employees to achieve optimal results
• Developing the necessary competencies for the company
• Increasing employee loyalty to the company

In other words, office contests can greatly increase the efficiency of each penny invested in the company workforce as well as the number of contacts or other key indicators for the company’s human resources.

Challenges and pitfalls you may face

When looking for the best contest ideas for employees, you may come across some difficulties connected with the specifics of that niche. Your workplace competitions must meet the objectives of the company and be measurable. The increase in the number of subscribers in a group on social networks is a metric that is poorly associated with actual business achievements, and simply organising giveaways for your workers on social media won’t really do much. You should develop a clever and measurable marketing strategy with actionable office contest ideas.

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Running a contest for work (workplace or office)

Your exciting contests and contest prize ideas for work should be targeted at your office workers. Therefore, many companies—either by themselves or with the help of outside contest management organisations—seek out work contest ideas and use a reliable contest management platform to make them a reality with optimal results.

Contest requirements

To achieve successful contests based on the best employee contest ideas, the objective must be employee focused. Offer relevant prizes, and use contests as an opportunity to learn more about your workers and colleagues. Create a contest to connect with your existing workers’ peer connections and other potential employees. Implement cool contest ideas to show off your company’s personality in a friendly way so you get the necessary information from them.

Rules

Develop clear competition rules.

First of all, you need to understand what is required of the participants. This is basically what they should do and what the results of that work should be. It’s necessary to come up with good office contest ideas and to search for exciting activities and memorable prizes as well as boost public relations in a professional environment. Then you can begin work on creating the rules as a whole.

They must contain the following data:

•   Time (steps, if needed)
•   Description of the conditions (who can participate, the number of prizes, etc.)
•   Requirements for the submitted work (as detailed as possible)
•   The procedure for determining the winners
•   Judging guidelines

Judging

Chose a contest platform, and select the jury.

Who are the judges? If you’ve been working in the professional field for a long time and your name has weight, you can put forward ideas for a contest at work in order to find someone to judge the contest.

When competitions are organised in larger companies, employees can judge. The main thing is that the chairman of the jury should be an authoritative person with significant merit (director, head of the department, etc.). You can also offer the judging responsibilities to employees from another organisation (provided there are friendly relations between the enterprises). It is necessary for the jury to handle their duties fairly. 

How to pick a winner

Most social media that you use for contests, including Facebook, Instagram, or any other platform, as well as event websites that integrate social media, are based on hashtags. If you are using a hashtag contest, ask people to post photos using your hashtag. Then simply look through the pictures with those hashtags and choose a winner.

In contests with judging, the jury will be responsible for picking the winner or the best participant, the worker of the year, Mr./Ms. Office, etc., depending on the criteria set.

Types of contests to run

Depending on the platform or event website you choose, the following contest types are available:

• Facebook photo contests 
• Instagram photo contests
• Contests on Twitter
• Group photo contests, etc.

Try to come up with contest and awards ideas that are as creative as possible. Consider that your competitor companies may be using the same channels and tools as you for their creative contest ideas for work and fun office competitions. You want to stand out from the crowd!

Best contest and giveaway ideas for work (workplace or office)

There are plenty of interesting online contest formats you should apply in your office. Here are some of the most popular employee contest ideas for your office to use. 

• Three months free of an office software subscription
• Sports/fitness, language courses, or other educational offers for the team 
• Gift basket (great for internal contests)
• Black Friday discounts
• Thanksgiving contest ideas for work
• New Year giveaway
• Free food delivery for a year 
• Sponsored corporate retreats

Hashtag contest

This type of contest is effective for increasing your brand awareness and involving more and more new readers directly from the pages of those who are already subscribed to you directly.

Selfie contest 

In selfie contests, encourage people to post photos that show off their workplaces. 

Photo caption contest

Facebook photo caption contests and voting competitions are perfect for loyal teams. They may also add the funniest caption for the photo in a comment below. 

Feedback contest

In this case, you may say something like: Fill out the GEVME survey and send in your valuable feedback about your workplace or corporate culture to enter into the office contest for FREE.

Quiz contest

Encourage your employees to play thousands of free online trivia quiz games and win real prizes. There are fun quizzes about virtually every topic imaginable: geography, history, sports, music, TV, business, etc.

Prize ideas

Office life demands careful choosing of contest rewards ideas and prizes for competitors. Here are some of the most popular ideas:

Manly makeover

Partner with a barbershop in your area to give your employees a “manly makeover” party with a product prize package or certificate for cash or services.

Mr./Ms. Office photo shoot in costumes

Run a contest that gives away a thematic photo shoot in costumes with office furniture, in the office back yard, or in other incredible office-related locations.

Identifying your contest idea

Who is your ideal contest entrant? What’s the best idea for your company brand? After selecting your audience and prizes, you’ll need to determine the hook for your contest. Make sure you stick to the budget. To identify the perfect idea, create a contest format that will fully meet the needs of your loyal workers and colleagues. Learn the rules and include the tips and ideas for your next business contests from organisation leaders. 

Tips

1. The competition should be exciting to your workers. The product or other prize should be something that subscribers would actually like to receive.
2. Don’t forget to market your office contest. The competition should be aimed at increasing the reach and involvement of your target users. (Contests do this well, where participants need to mark friends or post stories with references to your company, etc.)
3. Have simple conditions. The fewer actions that users need to do to participate in the contest, the more that people will engage.
4. Avoid changing competition rules, conditions, and requirements. Make them short, concise, clear, and to the point. Keep them consistent!
5. The judging mechanics should be transparent to the participants, and you should not deceive the participants or fake the results in any way.

It’s never a bad idea to touch on the current trends in your industry via social media, contest websites, and other event platforms.

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Be creative and intelligent with your contest ideas for the workplace and office by using voting management and effective contest management platform to succeed!