A tightly-knit company culture is one of the key ingredients to business success. It cultivates accountability, which in turn impacts employee engagement, productivity, and motivation when advocating for your brand. Millennial workers also value company culture the most in business organizations.

Today, some of the best ways to build company culture is to hold corporate events and team-building activities. Once you understand the core components of a successful corporate event, the next step is to choose an actual idea that will resonate well with your workforce.

While there are thousands of corporate event ideas out there, below are ten of the best ones you should try this 2017:

1. Sporting Events

If your employees root for a local sports team, bringing them to a game is a great way to have them cheer together. While there’s a chance that someone will favor the opposing team, conflicting views in sports is an effective ice-breaker. You can leverage this opportunity to bring employees closer together and build up friendly competition.

2. Volunteering

Volunteering not only gets everyone contributing to a common cause, it also provides your employee advocates with plenty of material for social media sharing. This will also make your brand look good in front of the masses.

3. The Biggest Loser

Statistics show that a 1% weight or blood pressure reduction can save up to $103 a year in medical costs per employee. You can encourage employees to lose more by holding a “Biggest Loser” event. Weight-loss challenges not only improves your employees’ health, it will also help build their confidence and loyalty by offering rewards that matter to them.

4. Birthday Surprise Party

This is something your company can do as many times in a year as the number of employees you have. But since everyone can see it coming, the least you can do is try new activities every time to keep the celebrant guessing. The important thing is that employees feel the sense of belongingness and gratitude toward your company.

5. Professional Development Workshop

Although corporate events are opportunities for employees to relax, offering professional development workshops that focus on relevant skills should still win their full attention and participation. Besides, employees can have fun while learning at the same time if you have excellent motivational speakers. I strongly refer to this post for the qualities in a speaker you should look for.

6. Laser Tag

A fast-paced, team-oriented game of laser tag not only pushes employees to be competitive, it’s also a great way to develop the leadership skills of certain individuals. Since laser tag won’t usually consume the whole day, you can schedule it along with other events that will enable employees to unwind.

7. Escape Rooms

You can test the observation, deductive reasoning, and decision-making skills of your employees through escape rooms. To make things more interesting, form groups and make it a contest on who are faster in beating the puzzle. This will let you see who among your employees can cope with pressure.

8. Outdoor BBQ Party

An outdoor BBQ party is a simple and cost-effective way to help employees socialize and build workplace relationships. Just remember to pick a great venue that allows other outdoor activities like swimming or Frisbee. You can also spice things up by hosting a BBQ cook-off and pit your organization’s culinary aspirants against each other.

9. Brewery Tour

You may expect a dinner or night out somewhere in this list, but you probably already had one or two before. If you want to try something different, you can bring your team to a brewery or winery tour – given there’s one near your location.

10. Social Media Takeover

A social media takeover gives employees full control of your company’s social media accounts. During that period, they can post anything they want – like a Facebook Live video of your company behind the scenes. This particular example is a great way to stir up social media engagement since live videos are viewed three times more than recorded ones. While it’s something that you can frequently do, you need an employee that knows their way around social media and naturally communicates well with the rest of your company.