Top 6 Work Retreat Activities in Thailand, Singapore, and SE Asia to Build Trust

A work retreat is a welcome opportunity for teams to get together and engage in fun, engaging, and purposeful team bonding.

A team-building retreat is your chance as a team leader to organize a team-building exercise that helps employees learn valuable skills and build trust while also supporting company culture.

However, planning a memorable yet meaningful company retreat isn’t easy – retreat planning with team-building activities can be challenging.

For a successful retreat, let the team-building experts at Making Teams plan your next team-building retreat.

The Return of the In-person Team Building Retreat

Many teams had to resort to creative ideas for fun activities for virtual corporate retreat ideas during the pandemic.

Thankfully, our virtual experts developed various exciting team-building exercises for remote teams to build problem-solving skills and get the creative juices flowing. The virtual escape room, game night, and scavenger hunt are still available for remote workers.

However, we’re thankful that staff members can once again engage in a little friendly competition through team activities in person.

Let’s run through a selection of our company retreat ideas available to team members in SE Asia.

12 Best Retreat Team Building Activities in Thailand

1. Amazing Race

A race based on the popular TV show “The Amazing Race”. Team members travel from challenge to challenge in minivans or on public transportation. 

Small teams must locate venues and complete local cultural activities, including boxing, dancing, and a cooking class. The activities vary depending on the retreat location.

This team retreat activity tests creative thinking and critical thinking skills as teams must delegate, communicate, and trust each other in various team tasks.

This retreat experience can be a great idea to explore a new city and get out into the fresh air of the retreat location.

2. Art Recreation

Team members work together to produce a giant collaborative piece of art in art class that gets the creative juices flowing.

A white canvas, paints, and brushes are distributed to your teams. Additionally, you will get one “slice” of an image that you must duplicate on the white canvas.

Teams are given individual squares of the image that have been divided up.

Teams must replicate their square by painting onto the white canvas because they won’t be able to view the whole picture.

The final gigantic image won’t be revealed until all teams have finished and the canvases are arranged together.

This activity is great for corporate retreats since you can take your artwork back to the workplace as a souvenir. Teams must cooperate and engage effectively to ensure they create artwork they can be proud of.

3. Escape Rooms

Team building retreats can be tedious. Often, team leaders focus too much on the learning goals and forget that employees sometimes need to have fun for a few hours to let off steam.

An escape room team-building activity is one of those examples of a fun activity that offers fantastic learning opportunities.

In our escape rooms across SE Asia, smaller teams compete against each other to complete various challenges and solve riddles against the clock. Usually, to encourage participation, every team member needs to complete a task.

In doing so, team members test their collaborative and problem-solving skills in a pressure situation. Even though the activity is fun first and foremost, it’s through these team bonding activities that trust is built.

4. Cardboard Box Boat Racing

It’s all in the name of this activity. Teams must build a makeshift boat within a time limit from various limited materials to participate in a frantic race on the river or sea, depending on the location.

Team sports are always a great way to inject a little friendly competition into staff retreats, and this activity adds the extra element of testing a team’s ability to think outside the box.

Who will show leadership to design a boat or brainstorm solutions? Who will plan the best way to use the materials provided? Will employees trust each other to build a seaworthy craft?

Teams love this task that lets them get out in the fresh air and get active.

5. Cluedo Mystery

A Cluedo mystery is a fantastic, exciting way to engage your employees.

Your teams will see a variety of settings, people, and the crucial crime itself. Teams must gather evidence, decipher clues, and discover the killer throughout the course of the evening utilizing their best sleuthing abilities.

This work retreat idea effectively works as a memorable mini-project for a team to finish, complete with cooperation, delegation, and goal-setting like any other project, except a lot more fun.

6. CSR Build a Bike

For your next corporate event, embrace the opportunity to highlight company culture goals by giving back to the local community.

The ‘Build a Bike’ activity is a popular and rewarding way of collaborating and working closely as a team to make a real difference in a local community.

Each team will be given a set of tasks to fulfill in competition with other teams. Teams receive bike parts after each game, which they then use to assemble their team’s bike during the second activity. The bikes are ultimately given to a chosen local charity.

Focusing on CSR within your team-building events encourages reflection on how these CSR principles can be brought back into the workplace and in further work activity.

Team Building Tips – How a Company Retreat Builds Trust

Team building activities can go a long way to fostering a team spirit within a group of employees. This team spirit is based on trust as team members learn more about each other and work together to complete tasks.

How team building builds trust:

• A team-building activity provides an opportunity to build interpersonal relationships. Getting together face-to-face and engaging in memorable yet taxing tasks allow people to bond in a slightly different work context. As people learn more about each other, they learn to trust each other.
• Offers opportunities for team members to showcase capabilities. A fun, challenging team-building event may offer an opportunity for a team member to display leadership skills or to highlight their ability to think outside the box. Seeing a range of skills in teams helps peers view each other in a new light, leading to more trusting working relationships.
• They are fun! Employees are allowed to enjoy themselves during company time. By embracing the lighter side of things once in a while, a team leader can create an atmosphere of trust where people don’t feel guilty about being their true selves.
• Team-building events often allow leaders to model trust and accountability by acting with honesty and transparency. Get involved, answer questions openly, and communicate with other team members.
• Company retreats also offer an occasion to celebrate successes and embrace positivity. They often double as a meeting but make it a meeting that focuses on the fun. Highlight by naming the people who are doing a good job and how they are helping the company progress toward its vision. In doing so, you create this nurturing, trusting environment for your business.

Team building With Meeting Teams

We’ve listed six fantastic in-person team-building events that we operate across SE Asia.

But those are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the engaging events that we can organize for your next work retreat.

Take the stress out of planning a memorable yet meaningful event, and let us create a customized event based on your business needs.

Reach out today to find out more.