National Fun at Work Day falls in late January each year, and it has become one of the dates our office hears about most from corporate clients. The idea is simple: put a few proper games in front of your staff for a day and let them compete against each other. Some companies turn it into a full corporate fun day with a dozen attractions on a field, others park a single reaction game in a meeting room for the afternoon. Both count, and both tend to go down well.
What a workplace fun day includes
The core of most fun days we set up around Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster is a row of interactive games. The Batak Pro is the one people queue for: twelve lit targets flash in random patterns and you hit as many as you can in sixty seconds, which makes it a natural head-to-head contest. Next to it usually sits Strike a Light, a two-player table where each side hammers its lit dome buttons for thirty seconds to take the score. Arcade basketball covers the sporty end, with an electronic scoreboard that keeps everyone honest. For larger sites we add things like a racing car simulator or a rodeo bull out on the grass, and a cash grabber works well when the company is raising money for charity on the same day.
How much of that you need depends on headcount and how long the day runs. A thirty-person office usually gets by on two or three games that people rotate through; a few hundred staff on a corporate site needs a line-up and a plan. Our exhibition game hire range covers the compact indoor end, and the corporate entertainment side of the site has the bigger attractions.
Staffed and powered, or self-run
One decision worth making early is who runs the games. We can supply trained attendants who set up, supervise and power everything, or you can run the kit yourselves once it's delivered. Pinx Salon have taken the staffed option for their annual charity fun day every year since 2013, and for most offices it wins anyway, because nobody from your team ends up holding a stopwatch all afternoon. Staffed operation is also the way to get the most out of a cash grabber - Verity Watson hired one for a February 2025 event and told us the queue for it never went down all night, with the branding we printed for her a highlight too. She left five stars on Google, as it goes. Our rating there stands at 5 out of 5 from more than 209 reviews, and the same kit goes out, gets set up and comes back with our own drivers from the Rotherham warehouse.
Timing: late January, but any day works
The official date moves – it is a Friday in late January, and the exact one shifts year to year – so check the current one before you circulate anything. There is nothing magic about the date itself. We deliver fun day kit on random Tuesdays in June for companies that simply fancied a team day, and January suits plenty of people because it is one of the quieter stretches of the events year. If your preferred date is taken, the following week works just as well.
Planning one: the short version
- Count heads and pick games to match. Two or three reaction games cover a small office, and larger sites want a rotation of four or more so queues stay short.
- Walk the space first. Each game needs a floor area and access to a plug socket, and anything going outside needs reasonably level ground, so it is worth checking with your building or site before you book.
- Decide on staffed or self-run operation when you get the quote, because it changes both the price and the paperwork for the day.
- Book early. Late January fun days clash with each other, and the same games go out across Barnsley, Worksop, Chesterfield and nationwide from one warehouse, so the diary fills from both ends.
What a fun day will not fix
A fun day is a morale treat, and it works best as part of a decent year for a team, not as a substitute for sorting out whatever is stretching people in the first place. Fully remote teams get nothing out of a physical game day either, so if your staff are scattered it is usually better to spend the same budget on a get-together somewhere they can all reach. Offices in shared buildings should check noise with the neighbours too, because Strike a Light has its own sound system and it is not subtle.
If you want a hand sizing the day, the office will happily talk through headcount, space and dates on 0114 345 0135, or the delivery page covers how the kit actually gets to you.
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