Team-building activity for 240 adults at work?

For the love of God don't do a team-building exercise. Just treat people like adults.

As someone who does a lot of work with non-profits and is generally gung-ho about encouraging people to participate in their communities, if I went to a company conference in god-knows-where after spending countless hours in airports and hotels and whatever else, and I was then expected to go knock down walls or pull weeds for the day I would totally lose my shit.

I see there is some resistance to team building activities, and I understand why..but done right they don't have to be painful. I use team building techniques in my line of work and they can be really effective at building a cohesive team. Instead of spending a day in a conference room, why don't you provide a day of community service instead? It's a great team building activity, brings positive recognition to your org. in your community and folks feel like their time is valued. Work with a non-profit org that is familiar with coordinating large groups of volunteers. Something like Habitat for Humanity or the habitat restoration group in your local parks department. Spend the day doing demo work, or pulling invasive weeds in your local park, and use the $$ to provide a sweet catered lunch to your staff and the volunteer coordinators you are working with. Fresh air and self-paced physical labor (adjusted as needed for folks who have physical limitations) is a great way to build camaraderie.

adding to what deathpanels just said, beware the concept of "getting people out of their shells". it presupposes that you have the wisdom and power to alter the social orientation of joe, an adult professional, to an optimum social orientation determined by you. you might not like joe if you saw him without his shell.

On the physical activity side, please take into account that some of the attendees may have physical limitations you don't know about, and don't pressure them if they bow out without necessarily wanting to disclose their medical issues to you. (Another thing I appreciated about that event I described; I couldn't have bowled anyway due to a medical issue, but not necessarily one I wanted to talk about in the midst of a crowd of friends/colleagues.)

I was recently at a somewhat similar event, and the organizers opted to rent out a bowling alley that also had pretty damn good food. First half of the event, people who wanted to bowled, and everyone else mingled, ate, cheered on the bowlers. Second half, there were some organized game/activity/icebreaker things for those who enjoy such things, and again, everyone else could mingle, eat, drink, chat, cheer on the games. It was helpful and important that it was all in one big area, I think - being a mingler/benchwarmer, I was still able to cheer on the people doing the games, and that made it feel like it was all one big group event, even with component parts. One thing I did hate was that for a couple of the games the basic deal was 'we need two teams of ten people for this game - and we're not gonna tell you what it is until you volunteer.' Any chance that I was going to join in on that one went away once that announcement was made. And for one game that involved more physical contact with other people than some participants were anticipating, it seemed clear to me that some people were really uncomfortable and wishing for a way to back out. So, maybe don't do that. Choices, and knowing in advance what you're up for, and at least one choice being 'mingle, drink, eat, cheer on the teams doing other stuff' seems like as much of a winner as you're going to get for such an event.

Paintball. Laser tag. Paintball. No. Really, no. Some people have been way too close to workplace violence for anything involving coworkers "shooting" at each other.

A quibble about trivia: Trivia sucks when you are from the "wrong" country and the bulk of the questions come from pop culture, national history, and sports. A concrete suggestion: Anyone who suggested a physical activity outside of a conference room is spot on. Are you sure you're limited to this kind of location? That would be a real bummer. I've seen ropes courses go well, and other physical but less intimidating physical exercises, like a long walk in the woods. Also, Food.

I went to a 3-week summer workshop once, which had meals included, served in a big banquet hall/tent thing. One of the caveats to these meals was that twice each week, we were assigned seats at lunch instead of being able to pick our own, with the goal of making us network with the other people there (it was a mix of undergrads, grad students, professors, researchers, and high school teachers). I was dreading it leading up to the first "assigned" lunch, but it was surprisingly nice, and the forced mixing of the different levels of students/researchers/teachers got us into some really interesting discussions that wouldn't have happened had we all stayed within our own groups. So my suggestion would be to use the budget to fund a nice meal, catered in to your location. Don't call it "team building", just let people know that for the first 15 minutes (or whatever time period you pick) of the meal they'll be assigned a seat. You could provide a sheet of questions to jump-start conversation (maybe some "big issue" ones related to the field these people are in or their work, and some other more trivia-type ones) at each table. For me, the key to enjoying the "forced socializing" lunches was that the "forced" part wasn't especially long - we had to at least sit where we were assigned, but if it was really unpleasant or I just needed some quiet time after finishing my food, no one pushed me to keep sitting there - in that aspect I felt treated like an adult. Most of the time I actually stayed longer at these lunches because of the interesting discussions!