A different kind of team building

At Office Depot, team buildings have become a long-standing tradition, always highly anticipated by our #officedepotpeople. Last year, we wanted to keep the tradition alive, even though organizing an interactive team building is a lot more challenging when most of us are working from home. 

What we’ve learned about virtual team building is that it has the power to make remote teams feel as tight-knit as on-site teams. This is especially true if you leverage purpose, vision, and enthusiasm to plan a virtual team building activity, like the one we had. 

You probably wonder about how we’ve managed to achieve a safe and entertaining activity while focusing on collaboration and team spirit. The answer is simple: with the fresh ideas and clever input of a handful of creative people. In the end, they’ came up with a highly intriguing missing person scenario, having the added bonus of using engaging approaches and methodologies to aid in solving the case. 

All 22 competing teams were immersed in the entire investigative process, starting from the premise of a missing person that needs to be found, recovered, and sent back home. A clue was given every day, through e-mail, and every answer to it was a piece of the puzzle. 

The clues were cryptic and hard to crack, but the people of Office Depot proved once again just how resourceful they are, and they managed to solve the case. Some of the answers were spot on, while others were downright funny 😊. It has been truly amazing to see how inventive our employees are and – this activity was a – great way for them to reconnect. 

Take a look at the clues we had for our amazing employees. Would you have been able to solve the case?