Engagement Technique: Taskmaster
Have you ever watched the popular UK/Channel 4 show, Taskmaster? You’ll know the magic isn’t really about winning.
It’s about creativity, problem solving, teamwork, confidence, and watching people approach the exact same challenge in completely different ways. Plus it’s a whole load of FUN.
Which makes it surprisingly useful as an engagement exercise.
Taskmaster at Work takes the spirit of the show and adapts it into a safe, workplace-friendly activity that helps employees collaborate, communicate, and step outside their usual roles. And importantly, it should be fun. Because, why not!
How it works
Split employees into small mixed groups, ideally with people from different departments and levels of seniority. Appoint a “Taskmaster” (or a small judging panel) to set challenges, score entries, and keep energy high throughout the session. If you prefer, rotate the Taskmaster as the session continues.
The tasks can be a mix of creative, collaborative, problem-solving focused, or skill-based. You can lift ideas from the show (safe for work, of course, and realistic to do), or there is a popular board game you can buy for inspiration (I’m not sponsored by the show, promise, just a big fan!)
The idea is to set tasks that help the team work with new colleagues, think differently, practice confidence and communication, solve problems under light pressure, showcase strengths they may not normally use at work.
You can run this:
- As part of an away day
- During a team offsite
- In a lunch-and-learn style session
- Or as a shorter 1–2 hour workshop
Office-friendly task examples
The best tasks are simple enough that everyone can participate, but open-ended enough that creativity shines through.
Examples:
Creative challenges
- Create the best company meme
- Build the tallest structure from office supplies
- Design a new company value poster in 10 minutes
- Pitch the office kettle as if it’s a luxury product
Communication tasks
- Explain your job role without using industry jargon
- Deliver a 60-second presentation with no preparation
- Create the best LinkedIn post promoting the business.
- Tell a story using only objects found in the office
Collaboration tasks
- Solve a fictional customer complaint as a team
- Create a process improvement idea in 15 minutes
- Build an onboarding guide for aliens joining the company
- Complete a challenge where every team member has a different hidden rule
Friendly competition tasks
- Most creative social media content
- Best customer service response
- Best internal communications idea
- Fastest collaborative problem-solving task
The key is variety – mix the fun/silly icebreaker style tasks with the ‘this could be something that helps us in our role’ tasks.
Why it works
Taskmaster-style exercises improve engagement because they temporarily remove people from their normal workplace identity. The quiet person might suddenly become the best strategist. Someone junior may naturally take leadership. A department people rarely interact with suddenly becomes memorable.
With this approach you’ll create shared experiences, which is one of the fastest ways to build connection.
What to watch out for
Inclusivity is important
Sorry to be the fun police, but not everyone likes public competition or high-energy activities. Mix the task types so different personalities can contribute in different ways.
Be careful with group dynamics
Avoid putting friendship groups or leadership cliques together every time. The value comes from mixing people.
Don’t create “humiliation humour”
The TV show has an edge to it, with the taskmaster taking on a role with a wicked cruelty. That works on the show, of course, but probably not if you’re bringing people together. Workplace versions should stay supportive and psychologically safe.
Keep scoring light-hearted
The point is engagement, not taking competition too seriously.
The takeaway
Taskmaster at Work is a brilliant way to bring people together through creativity, collaboration, and light competition. It gives employees the chance to step up in ways they normally wouldn’t.
Sometimes engagement comes from serious conversations.
Sometimes it comes from asking a group of adults to build a tower out of printer paper and defend it like their life depends on it.
This post is part of our Engagement Techniques series of practical, low-cost ideas to bring more connection and meaning into work. Find the rest here
👉 Want to explore techniques like this in more depth? I run interactive employee engagement workshops where we bring these ideas to life.