With the excitement of the Olympic Games fast-approaching, you may be considering how to get your workplace into the spirit of things, and what better way than hosting your own Office Olympics? As the official formal suiting and closing ceremony outfit supplier for Team GB at Rio 2016, and one of the UK’s leading uniform and workwear suppliers, we thought we were perfectly placed to create an “official” guide to hosting your own Office Olympics!
Office Olympic Opening Ceremony
Like all Olympic Games, The Office Olympics starts with an opening ceremony. Your company is split into teams (departments or banks of desk are perfect for this) and assigned a country – why not get them to draw their countries out of a hat? (i.e. Accounts is USA, Customer Services is Belarus etc.) the teams then decorate their workstations to honour their assigned nation. Team members may also dress to match the country theme. Prizes are given for the best/most creative efforts. An ‘Olympic Torch’ is then paraded through the office to announce the beginning of the games.
Office Olympics Rules and Scoring System
Every member of every team must compete in at least one event during your Games. For each event there is a Gold, Silver and Bronze medal awarded (or medals for team events). You should also create a team board and update it after each event, so that a winning team can be announced (and rewarded) at the end of the games.
Gold medals are worth 15 points, Silver are 10 points, and Bronze is 5 points – allocate these per team win, rather than competitor.
Javelin
Using a pencil or even paper planes, because 1. who actually owns a javelin, and 2. do you really want to approach your health and safety officer about essentially throwing a spear in the office? The aim is then obviously to throw your
“javelin” as far as possible. Getting your javelin in the bin gets extra points.
Each team nominates one person for this event.
Rowing
Create your ‘boat’ which consists of four ‘rowers’ and your Cox (to ensure the rowers are working in unison, and more importantly to be the eyes of the team, steering them in the right direction). Depending upon the amount of free space in your office, this may be best run as a time trial event.
Volleyball
Soft ball or just screwed up paper over an (unused!) desk, depending on the amount of teams in your office, you may be best pulling names out of a hat to determine who plays who in the first rounds, you can also decide whether your losing semi-finalists both receive Bronze, or whether they play to decide in a separate game.
100m Relay
Using remote controlled cars, set out a track and race your cars around it. After each lap, the control is handed over to the next team-mate to complete the next lap.
Each team should nominate 3 people for this event.
Shot put
Throwing paper balls into waste paper baskets at different distances top 3 win.
Each team nominates one person for this event.
Archery
A pile of elastic bands, and a target! Flick the bands at the target!
Each team nominates one person for this event.
Table Tennis
Using a desktop table tennis set, there’s no need to break the bank on equipment here, we did a quick search and Google returned this table-top tennis set for less than £7!
Depending on the size of your office desks this could either be a singles or doubles event.
Synchronised Office Chairing
Think synchronised swimming, only on office chairs. Set your teams the challenge of choreographing a seated dance to the music track of their choice. For inspiration, see this glorious office-seated version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Your teams can decide themselves how many participants they want to have in this event.
We hope you enjoy your Office Olympics, and we’d love to see any photos or videos of your teams participating in your games, why not share them on the Simon Jersey Facebook page, or Tweet us using the hashtag #SJOfficeOlympics.
Good luck!
