For this reason, it's widely adopted in many companies However, if employee participation is not voluntary, these exercises could end up having the opposite effect Scavenger hunts, office trivia, escape rooms: Team-building activities can be an essential step towards fostering healthy workplace competition and boosting communication and collaboration among colleagues. But if employees feel these activities are mandatory and regard them as the bane of their workplace existence, potential benefits could be jeopardised. This is according to a new study by researchers from the University of Sydney. Their findings, published in the The team concluded that there are ethical implications involved in forcing employees to partake in these activities, after their study showed that participants had mixed feelings about team-building interventions.