A pub quiz run for the team, with one round built entirely from company facts and staff trivia. It scales further than almost anything else here, it works equally well in a room or on a call, and the in-house round is a surprisingly effective way to teach new starters things.
What it is good for
- Pure funNo learning objective. Sometimes that is the correct answer.
- Cross-team networkingConnecting people who would otherwise never share a meeting.
- OnboardingHelping new people learn names, norms and who to ask about what.
- CollaborationWorking a shared problem where no one person holds all the information.
What you need
- Five rounds of eight questions
- Answer sheets or a chat-based answer channel
- A scorer who is not the host
The run sheet
Five rounds of eight (prep)
General knowledge, music, pictures, a 'this year' round, and the house round. Mixing eras and subjects matters more than difficulty — a quiz where one generation knows every answer is not a quiz.
Build the house round carefully (prep)
Company facts, baby photos, 'whose desk is this', first jobs. Ask permission for anything involving an individual, every time, and drop anyone who hesitates without comment.
Teams of four to six, mixed (5 min)
Assign teams rather than letting people self-select. Self-selected quiz teams are the existing lunch groups.
Run the rounds (45 min)
Questions read twice. Swap and mark after each round. A separate scorer frees the host to keep the pace up.
Scores low to high (10 min)
Read from last place up. Prize for last place as well as first — it keeps the bottom half engaged from round two onwards.
Facilitator notes
- A picture round carries a remote quiz. Screen-shared images are the thing that stops it feeling like a conference call.
- Never make the house round require long service to answer. Half the fun is a new starter winning it, so skew it towards things that are discoverable.
- Have a second host ready. One person reading, marking and adjudicating for an hour is a bad job.
Debrief questions
Ask these immediately afterwards, not next week. Fifteen minutes of these is what turns the activity into something the team refers back to — see the debrief guide.
- Which house-round answer surprised the most people?
- What should be in next quarter's house round?
Variations
New starter round
One round written by the newest person in the company about themselves. Does more for integrating them than a month of introductions.
Rolling league
Quarterly quizzes with a running team league table and the same teams all year. The teams become real affiliations, which is the actual goal.
Access and inclusion
Audio-only questions exclude some people and picture-only rounds exclude others — always provide both the words and the image. Avoid speed buzzers; written answers per round keep it fair.
Running it remotely
Native to video. Teams in breakout rooms between rounds to confer, everyone back in the main room for questions.