Bingo Icebreaker

by Peggy Hancock

As a customer, you can often tell when employees of a company you patronize enjoy being around each other and work cohesively as a group. There's an air of cooperation and of teamwork and it creates a more pleasant experience for the customer, as well as the employees.

Peggy Hancock has successfully used a Bingo Icebreaker in bank get-togethers and training sessions to help employees get to know one another. It's a fun way to learn more about each person.

Peggy explains how it works:

Make yourself a bingo card. Make each square pertain to a person in the >
You could put in the squares things like:

Bank auditor
Been in banking less than 10 years
Been in banking more than 5 years
Drove over 100 miles to be here
Started out as a teller
Made the most loans last year

Everybody has to find someone who matches one of the squares and have them sign the square they match. This is most fun when you have a fairly large group - 30 or so. I've used it in groups of up to 100.

You can put restrictions on how the bingo cards must be completed, like you can't have anybody sign a card more than once, or more than once in the same row.

You must be careful that you make sure someone is going to be in attendance that matches the square if you're going to put someone specific in there.

Throw in some things that are silly just for fun.

Editor's Note: Peggy and I also talked about how this could be used to help familiarize employees with who does what and who knows what within the institution. There's nothing worse for customers than being transferred from one employee to another because of lack of clarity about who has responsibility for certain taks or who has knowledge of how to do something.

Create a bingo card based upon knowledge or duties. Note on it things like "Person to route customer privacy complaints to" and "Individual to notify when you receive a counterfeit". It will be an entertaining way to learn more about how your institution works.

Peggy Hancock
Peggy Hancock has more than 26 years of experience in financial services. Previously, she was a Personal Banking Officer of an $8 billion Oklahoma based financial institution. Until that time, she had been a Branch Manager for a downtown Tulsa metropolitan bank, with assets of $100 million. Peggy has also presented for ASTD Green Country Chapter, YWCA and the 6th Annual Northeastern Oklahoma Women?s Conference. Peggy has served on the Board of Directors of ASTD, the American Society for Training and Development, for 5 years. She is also a member of the Board of Regents and instructor for the Basic Banking School sponsored by the Oklahoma Bankers Association.

First published on BankersOnline 08/27/01.