In 2023, only 33% of U.S. workers felt engaged, resulting in about $1.9 trillion in lost productivity. This, combined with decreased feelings of connection for virtual teams, contributes to struggles with team cohesion.
Effective teams deliver better results, drive innovation, and create a more positive working environment. But if issues like decreased collaboration, morale, and communication aren’t addressed, team productivity flounders and workplaces lose top-performing talent.
How can managers strengthen team connections in a fun and meaningful way? Team-building trivia is one powerful way to nurture positive workplace relationships.
Why team building matters
The importance of team-building activities in the workplace
Feelings of connection and support are missing for many employees, even those who commute to the office.
Gallup found a majority of employees feel unsupported at work. Only 41% of employees believe someone at work cares about them as a person, while only 21% say they have a best friend at work.
For remote employees, the 2021 State of Remote Work report by GitLab found that 40% of employees want more social activities to increase feelings of connection, and team-building activities can meet that need.
Team building helps break down silos and encourage communication. At its best, team-building fosters trust and camaraderie between coworkers, leading to improved collaboration and communication. After all, when teammates know and appreciate each other better, conflicts are less likely to arise and they’re more likely to lean on each other’s strengths when it comes to innovation.
The role of trivia in workplace cohesion
Why choose trivia for your team-building activity? It’s a classic game most are familiar with, making it easy to set up and get people engaged in.
Trivia sparks friendly competition and allows individuals to showcase their knowledge and contribute to the team's success, regardless of their professional background. With a thoughtful approach, team-building trivia feels less forced and breaks down feelings of awkwardness so true bonding can begin.
Key benefits of team-building trivia
Team-building trivia delivers a multitude of benefits:
1. Enhanced team communication
A friendly round of trivia encourages open communication by inviting colleagues to discuss answers, share knowledge, and even strategize to come up with the right answers. Working toward a common goal of beating the trivia challenge encourages teammates to use their problem-solving skills.
Plus, the chance to communicate outside of everyday work routines provides opportunities to create shared experiences and memories.
2. Improved collaboration
Trivia breaks down hierarchies and fosters a sense of equality, encouraging team members to support and learn from each other. This translates into a more open and respectful work environment and improved psychological safety, so employees feel more comfortable sharing ideas and taking risks.
Psychological safety alone is a powerful trait of synergized teams. In its 2022 State of Teams report, Atlassian found evidence that high-performing teams exhibit the qualities of psychological safety along with alignment, cohesion, and potential for innovation.
3. Increased morale and engagement
There’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to employee engagement. To avoid team members checking out and “quiet quitting,” it’s important for managers and leadership to implement various culture initiatives to ensure employees feel heard, supported, and connected to the company mission.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for games and laughter, though. Fun team-building games give workers a break from the daily grind and gather them together for a chance to relax and de-stress.
Laughter and positive social interactions boost morale and are key for improving employees’ mental health—a workplace initiative more businesses should prioritize in order to improve productivity and overall employee health. A study by One Medical found that about 75% of workers said their mental health stayed the same or got worse in 2022.
35 fun trivia quiz questions for team building
Now that you know the benefits of team-building trivia, it’s time for the fun part: Choosing questions! Here’s a list of trivia question ideas to get you started:
General knowledge questions
- Who was the first person to walk on the moon? Neil Armstrong.
- What’s the largest country in the world by land area? Russia.
- What’s the world’s most spoken language in terms of native speakers? Mandarin Chinese.
- What was the first company to reach a $1 trillion market valuation? Apple.
- What was the highest-grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation)? Gone with the Wind.
- In what country did the first Starbucks open outside of North America? Japan.
- Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize? Marie Curie.
- What year was the internet opened to the public? 1993.
- How old was Rose in the “Titanic” movie when she was recounting her story? 100 years old.
- What was the first Disney animated film that wasn’t based on an already existing story? “The Lion King.”
Need more ideas? Discover 10 more interactive presentation games to liven up your next team meeting.
Industry-specific trivia
Marketing
- What does “CTR” stand for in marketing? Click-through rate.
- What media format has the highest ROI? Video.
- What marketing metric measures the percentage of customers who stop using a product during a specific time period? Customer churn rate.
- What generation is more likely to use social media to contact customer service? Gen Z.
- To promote “Stranger Things,” which video game did Netflix collaborate with to create an Upside Down mode? Fortnite.
Finance
- Dogecoin is an example of what? Meme coin or altcoin.
- Which two women have appeared on the U.S. $1 coin? Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony.
- Who was the first U.S. billionaire? Henry Ford.
- Who invented Bitcoin? Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Which type of bond is the safest investment? U.S. Treasury bond.
Technology
- One gigabyte is equal to how many megabytes? 1,000.
- What’s the name of the British computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web? Tim Berners-Lee.
- What college did Microsoft’s Bill Gates graduate from? None!
- An older phone that doesn’t have smartphone features is called what? A dumb phone.
- A small piece of data that’s sent from a website and stored in a browser is called what? Cookie.
Company history and culture round
- What year was [company] founded?
- What’s our company mission statement?
- What are our company values?
- How did [company] get its name?
- What was the first product [company] offered?
World geography trivia questions
- How many countries border China? 14.
- How many countries are in North America? 23. (Besides Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, all sovereign states in the Caribbean and Central America are included in North America.)
- What country does the Rhine River run through? Germany.
- Which country in Europe has the biggest population? Russia.
- How much of the Netherlands lies below sea level? More than half.
Fun and quirky trivia challenges
- Iceland diverted roads, driveways, and houses to accommodate which mythical beings? Elves.
- What food was originally called a “Love Apple”? Tomato.
- What country has the most islands in the world? Sweden.
- What fictional language has the most speakers in the world? Klingon.
- How many floors does the Eiffel Tower have? Three.
How to organize a trivia event for your team
Now that your questions are set, it’s time to figure out logistics.
Set up the trivia game
Start by setting goals for this team-building activity. What do you hope to achieve—team bonding, knowledge sharing, or just plain old fun?
Next, consider the following to finish the initial setup:
- Format: Will your event be virtual, in-person, or hybrid? Is it part of a virtual happy hour? Will you serve or pay for drinks and snacks, or should employees bring their own?
- Duration: How long will your event last?
- Tools: Do employees need to bring any special items, like their laptop or a notebook?
Choose the right questions
Tailor the difficulty of your team-building trivia questions and categories to your audience’s interests and knowledge level:
- Choose categories: Decide between general knowledge, industry-specific, company-themed, or a mix of questions. You might even ask your team to contribute their own categories.
- Write your questions: Ensure your questions are clear, concise, and have correct answers ready. Vary the difficulty by including both easy and hard questions, and try to mix question categories (unless your category is broad enough) to appeal to all players. For example, a game focused only on sports trivia questions or history questions might not be as easy if you’re basing the answers on American sports or history.
- Add icebreakers: Warm up your group with silly questions that “break the ice.”
Use technology to make it interactive
Use apps like Poll Everywhere to create your trivia quizzes and display questions and answers in real time. This simplifies the process on your end and makes the game more dynamic for players.
Poll Everywhere offers a handful of features to simplify the team-building event setup on your end and make the game more dynamic for your teammates:
- Live polls: Create multiple-choice, open-ended, and ranking questions, and watch the answers pop up in real time.
- Word Clouds: Display a visual collection of everyone’s answers in a Word Cloud.
- Picture polls: Get creative and use Poll Everywhere’s Clickable Image feature to share images with cryptic clues or ambiguous situations. Ask your team to vote on the most likely outcome or funniest interpretation.
- Competitions: Pit teammates against each other or divide them into rival teams, then use the Competitions feature to host your trivia quiz. This displays a leaderboard at the end so everyone can see who took home the gold.
Get started: 3 tips for effortless and fun Poll Everywhere trivia games.
Get everyone involved
Promote your event in Slack, on Zoom, or through any other communication platform your team uses. Be sure to add a calendar event to everyone’s schedule as well so team-building time is blocked off.
Employees can participate in other ways, too:
- Choosing team names or creating their own questions
- Hosting the next event
- Starting and stopping the timer
- Selecting music for the event
Once your team-building event is over, announce the winners and invite everyone to celebrate. Share your appreciation for everyone who participated and open the door for feedback if you plan to host more trivia games in the future.
How to adapt trivia for virtual team building
If your team is fully remote, don’t worry—you can still enjoy a friendly game of trivia. Here are some virtual event ideas to get you started. (These work great for hybrid and in-person games, too!)
10 virtual trivia game ideas
- Around the world: Create sets of questions for each continent or certain countries.
- Decades showdown: Bring everyone along for a blast from the past with questions about each decade’s pop culture, events, and trends.
- Movie madness: Host a themed trivia night based on a specific genre or director, incorporating movie clips and soundtracks.
- Name that brand: Share cryptic images of brand logos—without the names, of course—and challenge teammates to name the brand the logo belongs to.
- Guess who?: Share photos of famous celebrities and public figures, and see who can put a name to the most faces.
- Guess the book/movie: Create clues using only emojis, and have teams race against the clock to decipher the hidden book or movie title.
- Team trivia: Before the event, ask employees to submit trivia questions about their personal customs, hobbies, and likes or dislikes. Then see who can guess which teammate the question is about.
- Music mania: Choose a specific genre or time period, then play song clips and have teams identify the artist or song title.
- Would you rather…: Pose humorous or thought-provoking “Would you rather…” scenarios to your team, then see who comes up with the most creative or funniest answer.
- Where in the world?: Display photos of various global locations, and see which teammates can name the correct country or city.
Choose remote-friendly online tools
Don’t forget to choose a polling tool for your team-building trivia event so virtual teammates can participate. User-friendly platforms like Poll Everywhere ensure everyone can play.
Make it interactive and inclusive
Remember to be mindful of cultural or other sensitivities while planning your team-building event. Avoid topics that might exclude certain team members, but also offer diverse questions to keep things fun and challenging.
- Encourage active participation: Use Zoom breakout rooms for team discussions and allow text chat for side comments.
- Use humor and icebreakers: Start with lighthearted questions or fun facts to loosen up the atmosphere and build rapport before the competition begins.
- Schedule strategically: Consider time zones and availability when choosing a date and time for your event.
Foster connection with Poll Everywhere and team-building trivia games
Team-building trivia offers an engaging format for employees to gather together and learn more about each other during the workday. This recipe for a fun and rewarding experience can improve morale, communication, collaboration, and—most importantly—team engagement.
Interactive polling apps can make your trivia event more interactive for both in-office and remote employees. Use Poll Everywhere’s dynamic features plus our trivia tips and ideas to create an engaging experience that strengthens bonds, boosts collaboration, and creates lasting memories for your team.