Planning a corporate team-building event isn’t always as easy as it sounds… even for some of you type A admin folks out there! You want something that gets employees out of their usual routines, encourages people to interact, and gives everyone a reason to have fun together. You also don’t want an activity that feels forced, awkward, or like another mandatory meeting with a fun name.
Virtual corporate trivia gives your team a chance to compete, collaborate, laugh at some questionable answers, and maybe discover that the person in accounting somehow knows an alarming amount about ’90s sitcoms.
Whether you’re planning an office happy hour, an employee appreciation event, a company holiday party, a conference breakout session, or a remote team gathering, trivia gives employees a chance to connect without requiring anyone to be particularly athletic, outgoing, or competitive. The best part? Employees actually have fun doing it.
Why Virtual Corporate Trivia Works for Team Building
Good team-building activities have a few things in common: they’re easy to participate in, give people a reason to interact, and don’t feel too much like work.
Trivia checks all three boxes.
A good trivia question doesn’t just have one person shouting out an answer. It gets a team talking.
“I know this one.”
“Wait, isn’t that the other guy?”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s D.”
“We’re going with D. Final answer.”
That little bit of back and forth is exactly what makes trivia such a natural team-building activity.
“The best questions are the ones teams can figure out together, even if nobody knows the answer right away.” — Dan Burns, Founder of Whaddayaknow?
Employees work together, compare what they know, learn a few things about their coworkers, and have fun doing it.
Most importantly, virtual trivia doesn’t require employees to be in the same physical location.
For remote and hybrid companies, that’s a pretty big deal.
Planning a Corporate Team-Building Event? See How Whaddayaknow? Can Help
Virtual Corporate Trivia: Easy as 1, 2, 3
One of the biggest advantages of hiring a professional trivia company is that you don’t have to become a trivia host.
That’s our job.
Your event is run live by a professional host who handles the questions, scoring, pacing, and keeps everyone on track. Your employees, and you, simply show up and play.
The best part about making it virtual? Your team doesn’t have to be in the same office, or even the same city, to play together. Remote employees can join from home, coworkers in different offices can compete on the same team, and nobody has to spend half the afternoon traveling to an event space.
Wondering what the process looks like? Look no further:
1. Pick a Date and Time
Start with the easy part: figure out when your team is available.
Virtual corporate trivia can fit into a variety of schedules. Games generally run anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours, depending on your preferences and available time.
You might use trivia as:
- A remote team-building activity
- An employee appreciation event
- A holiday party
- A fun way to break up the work week
You don’t need to dedicate an entire afternoon to it, either. A shorter game can easily fit into a midday event or a scheduled team gathering, while a longer game gives everyone more time to compete.
2. Tell Us About Your Team
This is where things get fun.
We’ll want to know how many people are playing, since teams work best with 4-8 players. There is no overall player limit, so virtual trivia can work for a small department or a much larger company-wide event.
During the planning process, you can also talk through your goals, budget, group size, and anything that makes your team unique. Every company is different, so the idea isn’t to force your team into a one-size-fits-all trivia package.
Maybe your team is full of movie buffs.
Maybe they’re obsessed with sports.
Maybe everyone has a weirdly extensive knowledge of reality television.
Or, maybe you want the entire game to revolve around your company’s industry.
We’ll work with you to figure out what makes the most sense.
3. Get Your Team Ready to Play
Once the event is scheduled, you’ll want to give employees the information they need to join.
The good news? There isn’t a complicated registration process or special trivia software everyone has to download.
Your team can use the video meeting platform your company already knows, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. The trivia answers are submitted through a simple browser-based interface. No downloads or special platforms are required.
That means your employees can click a meeting link, join their coworkers, and get ready to play.
Pretty painless, if you ask us!
What Happens During the Game?
For a remote event, teams can use breakout rooms to discuss their answers privately. This is where the team-building magic actually happens, because now everyone has to talk.
Someone reads the question.
Another person suggests an answer.
Someone else disagrees.
Someone Googles the answer.
Just kidding.
Don’t Google. Seriously, that’s like the one rule of trivia. Leave your phone to the side.
Where were we? Oh, yeah.
The team submits its answer through the online game interface, and everyone comes back together for the next question or round.
Meanwhile, your professional host keeps everything moving.
A typical Whaddayaknow? game includes a mixture of question rounds and bonus rounds. The standard format features two rounds of six questions, picture and clue identification bonus rounds, and a final wager round. Depending on the event, we can also incorporate song identification and escalating clue rounds.
That variety matters.
Nobody wants to spend 90 minutes answering 50 questions that all feel exactly the same.
The goal is to keep people guessing, talking, laughing, and occasionally yelling, “HOW DID WE NOT GET THAT?!”
Dan has seen plenty of that competitiveness firsthand. One of his favorite examples involved a player dressed as a Viking who was so confident in his team’s answer that he stood on a table before Dan revealed the deciding answer. Dan played along, building up the suspense and leading the player to believe he was right before revealing that his answer was actually wrong. The opposing team erupted, and, naturally, immediately went over to rub it in.
What Does Corporate Trivia Look Like?
This is one of the biggest benefits of working with an experienced trivia company: you don’t have to write the trivia yourself.
Whaddayaknow? questions cover general knowledge and pop culture and are designed to encourage discussion among team members. We aim for a balance between questions that are challenging and questions that give people that satisfying “Oh! I know this!” feeling.
The good news? Corporate trivia doesn’t have to feel generic.
We can incorporate company-specific questions, inside jokes, industry topics, or an overall event theme to make the experience feel like it was created specifically for your team.
Here, take some of our examples:
Your Company
How well does everyone actually know the company?
- Company history, milestones, products, offices, or memorable moments.
- Work in questions that reference your team’s own history.
Just don’t make every question something that only the CEO knows.
Your Industry
An industry-themed round can be a great way to make the trivia feel relevant without turning the whole event into a professional development seminar.
- A technology company might get questions about inventions and technology.
- A marketing team could tackle famous advertising campaigns.
- A finance company could get a round of business and economic trivia.
- For a law firm, a picture round might include famous courtroom scenes from movies.
And yes, there are ways to make industry trivia fun.
We promise.
Inside Jokes
One of the most fun parts of a private corporate trivia event is being able to incorporate those little shared moments.
If there’s a running joke around the office, a memorable team moment, or something everyone on the team knows, it can become part of the game.
Suddenly, a question isn’t just a question. It’s something your employees recognize as theirs. Also, it’s just plain entertaining.
Event Themes
You can also build your game around a specific theme, or lightly tailor a general trivia game to your group. Maybe you’ve seen this format at one of our live weekly trivia events.
The same approach can work for birthdays, weddings, and other celebrations, where general trivia can be lightly tailored to the guest of honor.
For example, instead of asking a question specifically about Katie, you might use something she loves as the jumping-off point: “One of Katie’s favorite places she’s traveled is France. What two countries border France?” Or “John loves to grill at any party. Which two major U.S. hamburger chains were founded first?” The questions are still general trivia that everyone can play, but the personal connection makes them feel like they were made specifically for the group.
If you’re not familiar, think:
- ’80s or ’90s trivia
- Specific movies and television shows
- Music
- Sports
- Pop culture
- Holiday trivia
- General knowledge
- A specific decade
- Your company’s industry
- A combination of several themes
And, of course, you don’t have to choose just one.
A good trivia game can jump from geography to movies to music to “wait, why do I know this?” in the span of a few questions.
In fact, according to Dan, one of the biggest misconceptions about corporate trivia is that every question should be company-related. In reality, he says employees tend to have the most fun with general knowledge, pop culture, music, geography, sports, and history, with just a small amount of company-specific content mixed in.
“People truly bond over the non work related stuff, and that really should be the purpose of any company event, live or virtual” — Dan Burns
Why Hire a Professional Trivia Host?
You could have someone at your company write 50 trivia questions, organize breakout rooms, keep track of scores, explain the rules, monitor the answer system, and host the entire game.
But then that person doesn’t get to enjoy the event.
And let’s be honest: they’ve done enough.
With a professionally hosted virtual trivia event, the host takes care of the game itself. Questions, scoring, pacing, and entertainment are handled for you.
Whaddayaknow? has been running professional live events for more than 15 years and currently produces more than 100 live trivia events every week. Our hosts are specifically trained for corporate and private events.
That experience matters because a good trivia host isn’t just someone who can read questions out loud.
They’re responsible for keeping the game moving, explaining answers, maintaining energy, and making sure the event feels like an actual event, not a PowerPoint presentation with a few multiple-choice questions.
Nearly 20 Years of Asking Questions
Dan founded Whaddayaknow? nearly 20 years ago and spent more than a decade hosting trivia six nights a week throughout Chicago. Over the years, one idea has remained constant: trivia works best when it gets people talking.
Whether it’s a weekly pub trivia night, a fundraiser, or a virtual corporate event, the goal is the same. People just want something fun to do together, at the end of the day!
Ready to Plan Your Corporate Trivia Event?
If you’re looking for a virtual team-building activity that is easy to organize, flexible enough for your group, and, well… actually fun, we’d love for our team to help your team.
At Whaddayaknow?, we handle the setup, hosting, questions, scoring, and support so you can focus on what you should be doing: playing trivia with your team.
Whether you’re planning a holiday party, employee appreciation event, corporate offsite, remote team activity, quarterly morale boost, or just looking for an excuse to find out who knows the most useless information in the company, we’ve got you covered.
Pick a date. Gather your team. We’ll bring the trivia.