Fun St. Patrick’s Games to Boost Agent Engagement

St. Patrick’s Day is a great excuse to drink green beer, dress up like a leprechaun, and embark on shenanigans with those close to you. Unfortunately, for most contact center agents, St. Patrick’s Day is just another day at the office.  * Cue the violin * This year, you can do better!

Why not take this opportunity to engage your agents by putting together some fun St. Paddy’s inspired games? They’ll soon forget about missing out on those packed pubs and impending hangovers with some friendly competition between co-workers. Plus, you get to enjoy a boost in agent morale and excess energy from all that chocolate and bonding!

We’ve put together 5 fun games that are easy to execute in any office and will make your agents feel lucky to have a manager like you:

Leprechaun Relay

What’s St. Patrick’s Day without dressing up in green? In addition to letting your staff come into work wearing their favourite green attire, grab some extra accessories to create this fun interactive relay.  First, you’ll need to divide your staff into two teams; and choose two team leads or floor supervisors to play the role of leprechauns. Then give each team all of the following accessories to use in the relay:

• Leprechaun hat
• Green / orange glitter or feather boas
• Green / orange Bowties
• Striped socks
• Pots filled with gold chocolate (these will come into use later)

Ready, set, GO! Watch them use teamwork, communication, and patience – all great qualities for customer service agents – in a race to make their leaders looks like jolly leprechauns. The team that puts the costume together first, wins and gets to keep their pot of gold chocolate. The other pot will be used later on.

St. Paddy’s Trivia

Okay, so that game probably got rowdy and the office is now buzzing. Have your staff go back to their desks and enjoy their chocolates. After a few minutes, drop them with a little trivia surprise! Use the channels your call center uses to see how your staff handles timely and accurate communication.

Find a few pieces of trivia about St. Patrick’s Day. Send one question out to each department. Maybe you have different teams dedicated to different channels or maybe your staff does it all. But to make it fair, make sure they are all responding from the channel they use for work. The first agent, from each department to respond to the question, will not only get a professional pat on the back but an additional reward of your choice, a $10 e-gift card will suffice.

The Amazing ‘Treasure Hunt’

First switch teams around so that other agents can work together. Give each team the same activity to complete, for example, “Complete a St. Paddy’s puzzle” or “Color this picture of a rainbow”.  Each completed task will lead to another team-building activity – think ‘The Amazing Race’ but with a lot less scenery. The team who completes every activity first wins. We recommend anywhere between 4-6 activities depending on the complexity.

This game will not only bring agents closer together, it will also help them communicate more, resolve conflicts better, and ultimately develop a stronger team.

Pot o’ Gold Dump

Okay, it’s time to bring back those gold chocolate coins! Hand out one coin to each agent, and then once again divide agents into teams. Put each team into a single file line and place an empty pot about 5-10 feet away from them. Each team member will then take turns throwing a chocolate coin into the pot. The person throwing MUST get their coin into the pot before moving to the next person. The first team to successfully get every coin in the pot wins!

Rainbow Coin Toss

Last but not least, we’ve got a rainbow coin toss. For this one, think bocce ball or curling. You must first take a picture of a rainbow (a good idea would be to use the best-colored rainbow from the scavenger hunt for this). Tape the rainbow against a wall and place one pot at the end of it. To make things fair, agents will be divided into teams and given the same amount of coins to throw, roll, or slide at the pot.

Coins will need to indicate which team they came from, so simply add the same St. Paddy’s sticker to both sides of each set of coins. For example: The Shamrock team will have shamrock stickers on both sides of their coins, while the Leprechaun team will have leprechaun stickers on both sides of their coins.

It will be up to each team to decide whether they want to designate someone to throw each coin or have multiple people toss the coins. Each team will take turns throwing a single coin at the pot. They can knock each other out or knock their team’s coins closer. When all coins have been thrown, count which team has the most coins closest to the pot. Winner takes all!

Do you have some fun games to boost agent engagement? Feel free to share them with us!