If you’ve been planning a team building activity and your provider can’t hold up their end of the bargain, what should you do? In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps you can follow to save your event, no panic necessary.
It’s sad to say, but it happens…
You’ve done everything right. The event’s been on the calendar for weeks. Your budget’s approved. The venue’s booked. Your team is excited. Leadership is watching. And then, out of nowhere, you get the call (or worse, the email) that makes your stomach drop.
“We’re sorry, but we won’t be able to fulfill your team building event.”
Your provider cancels. For whatever reason, they can’t deliver. And just like that, you’re left scrambling with an event that’s in serious jeopardy and a team that’s counting on you.
The stakes are high.
This isn’t just about a canceled activity. It’s about your credibility as a planner, your team’s morale, and the impression you’ll make on leadership.
But you don’t have to give up on your event. It’s just a matter of making a pivot (and fast).
Here’s what to do if your team building provider lets you down.
Why Team Building Providers Sometimes Let Their Customers Down
Before we dive into solutions, let’s acknowledge why this can sometimes happen.
Understanding the common reasons can help you make better decisions moving forward, and it might help you feel less frustrated about your current situation.
If your team building provider fails to deliver, it could be due to:
- Staffing shortages: A key facilitator gets sick, or the company simply can’t find enough qualified staff to execute your event. During peak seasons, this becomes even more plausible.
- Overbooking: Providers take on more events than they can realistically handle. They might have double-booked the same date or underestimated how many resources a particular event would require.
- Logistical failures: Venues fall through, materials don’t arrive on time, or essential equipment breaks down at the worst possible moment.
- Business closures or capacity issues: Especially with smaller or newer companies, a business might go under suddenly, leaving clients in the lurch. Or they realize too late that they can’t accommodate your group size or specific requirements.
- Miscommunication: Wrong dates, wrong activities, or misunderstood expectations. It’s frustrating, but unfortunately, it’s surprisingly common.
The point is this: these things shouldn’t happen, but they do. And when a provider lets you down, you need a solution, and fast.
How We Ensure This Doesn’t Happen to Our Customers
At Outback Team Building, we understand the pressure you’re under when planning a corporate event.
That’s why we’ve built our entire operation around reliability and flexibility.
Here’s how we ensure your event goes off without a hitch:
- Team located across North America: With facilitators and resources in both the U.S. and Canada, we can deliver events virtually anywhere, and always have stopgaps in place.
- Trusted by over 30,000 corporate groups: Organizations like Microsoft, Google, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Pfizer, Samsung, and Apple choose us because they know we’ll show up, deliver on our promises, and provide consistently excellent experiences.
- There’s always a solution available: Whether you need a virtual team building event that can be deployed immediately, a budget-friendly self-hosted option, or an in-person team building activity, we have options that can work with your timeline, even when that timeline is tight. By the way, if you’re not sure what self-hosted team building is, check out our resource on the topic.
When you work with Outback, you’re not just hiring a vendor. You’re partnering with a team that has the infrastructure, experience, and commitment to deliver, no matter what challenges arise.
Your Immediate Action Plan When Your Team Building Event Falls Apart
Now, on to the topic at hand!
When you discover your provider can’t deliver, every hour counts. Here’s exactly what you need to do right off the bat.
Step 1: Take a Deep Breath and Assess the Situation
Stop. Breathe. We know this is stressful, but you’re going to be fine. Remember: panic is the enemy of good decision-making.
Take a moment to gather the facts:
- How much time do you have? Is the event tomorrow, next week, or next month?
- What was originally planned? What type of activity, how many people, what goals?
- What’s your budget situation? Are funds already committed, or do you have flexibility?
- Can you change the date if needed? Sometimes a small delay is better than a rushed, subpar solution.
- What are your non-negotiables? Must it be in-person? Does it need to achieve specific goals?
Having this information clear in your mind will help you communicate effectively with potential replacement providers and make smart decisions under pressure.
Step 2: Communicate Strategically
That “don’t panic” thing applies to how you communicate the issue with your team and leaders. Whatever you do, just make sure you don’t fire off an emotional, frazzled message.
Instead, take a measured approach:
- Brief your leadership or stakeholders with a solution-focused message: “We’ve encountered an issue with our original vendor, but I’m already working on alternatives and will have a recommendation by [specific time].” This shows you’re in control and actively problem-solving.
- Document everything about the original provider’s failure: Keep emails, contracts, and communications. You may need this information for refunds, contractual disputes, or explaining the situation later.
- Hold off on telling your team (if they already knew about the event): If possible, don’t spread the news until you have a solid backup plan. There’s no reason to disappoint them twice.
Smart communication keeps stakeholders informed without creating unnecessary panic, and positions you as a capable problem-solver rather than a victim of circumstance.
Step 3: Find a Reliable Last-Minute Provider
This is where the rubber meets the road. You need a partner who can actually deliver, and deliver quickly.
Look for these key qualities in a backup provider:
- A proven track record with quick turnarounds: Ask directly: “What’s the shortest timeline you’ve successfully delivered an event?” You want specific examples, not vague reassurances.
- Transparency about what’s actually possible: A trustworthy provider will be honest about what they can and can’t do in your timeframe. Be wary of anyone who promises the moon without asking detailed questions about your needs.
- Clear, responsive communication: If they’re slow to respond during the planning phase, imagine what day-of communication will be like. You need a partner who answers quickly and clearly.
- Established credibility: Work with a company that’s trusted by major organizations. Outback has been rated “10/10” by thousands of groups from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Coca-Cola. That kind of track record doesn’t happen by accident.
When vetting potential providers, don’t be shy about asking tough questions. Here are the most important ones:
- “What activities can you genuinely execute in my timeframe?”
- “What do you need from me, and by when?”
- “What’s your backup plan if something goes wrong?”
- “Do you have materials and facilitators ready to go, or will you need to source them?”
- “Can you share references from other clients who needed last-minute events?”
The answers to these questions will tell you everything you need to know about whether a provider can actually deliver under pressure.
Step 4: Be Flexible (When It Makes Sense)
Sometimes, recovering from a provider failure means adjusting your expectations, but that doesn’t mean settling for less. It means being smart about what’s possible.
This can mean:
- You might need to pivot from outdoor to indoor (or vice versa). Weather-dependent activities become riskier on short timelines, so having a backup location can save the day.
- The activity might need to be shorter or in a different format than originally planned. A 90-minute high-energy activity might work better than a 3-hour complex challenge when time is tight.
- Virtual or self-hosted team building might be more feasible than in-person team building. Virtual activities require less logistical coordination and can often be executed with just a few days’ notice.
Here’s the key:
Focus on the outcome, not the specific activity.
If your goal was to help the team bond and have fun together, there are many ways to achieve that. Don’t get so attached to the original plan that you miss an even better alternative.
7 Quick-Turnaround Team Building Solutions That Actually Work
When time is tight, you need activities that can be planned and executed without extensive setup or coordination.
At Outback, we offer a wide array of quick-turnaround team building activities that can be executed in a matter of a week or two if time is on your side, or even a matter of a day or two if it’s mission-critical.
1. Virtual European Adventure
If you’ve got a team full of colleagues who love traveling and learning about new places, this is the perfect budget-friendly team building activity for your group.
Virtual European Adventure is all about connecting with your colleagues, testing your wits together, socializing, and collaborating through high-energy rounds of European-themed trivia.
In this activity, your group will break out into teams. Then, you’ll take part in a warm-up social mixer followed by three rounds of trivia, a Jeopardy-style lightning round using cellphone buzzers, and a European travel conversation to finish it all off.
For each trivia challenge answered correctly, your team will earn points. The team with the most points at the end of the activity will be crowned the Virtual European Adventure Champions!
2. Hollywood Murder Mystery
The case is fresh, but here’s what we know so far: we’ve got an up-and-coming actress who’s been found dead in her hotel room following last night’s awards show.
We have several suspects, but we haven’t been able to pin the crime on any of them for sure yet.
Now, it’s up to you and your team of detectives to crack the case.
Together, you’ll review case files and evidence, including police reports, coroners’ reports, photo evidence, tabloids, interrogations, and phone calls, as you determine the motive, method, and murderer and bring justice for the victim.
You’ll need to put your problem-solving skills to the test as you share theories, collaborate, and think outside the box with your fellow investigators.
3. Friendly Feud
If you’ve ever wanted to take part in your own Family Feud-style competition, this is your chance!
With Virtual Friendly Feud Social, you and your colleagues will break out into teams to compete through survey questions focused on culture and human nature.
And, as an added social element within the game, each round of questions will be followed by a guided social mixer where you’ll have the chance to take part in a group discussion and more deeply explore the survey questions from the previous round.t
4. Team Pursuit
In Team Pursuit, your team will need to get their energy levels up in order to tackle a series of mental, physical, skill, and mystery challenges, earning points for each successfully completed challenge.
What kinds of challenges will you be up against? We’re glad you asked. A few highlights include:
- Air Band Geeks: Who used to or still does play an instrument? Find at least three band geeks and have them hold “air” versions of their instruments. Record a 5-second video of them playing part of a song.
- Juggling Responsibilities: Who can juggle? Take a 5-second video with that person juggling three or more objects.
- Tasty Trivia: You throw away the outside and cook the inside. Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside. What is it?
- Commonalities: Determine your team’s most unique commonality. Once you figure out the most unique thing your group has in common, write a rap or rhyme about it of at least 4 lines. Then record a 5-second video of a teammate performing it.
- Sing Along: Choose a popular song and rewrite the lyrics to be about your team. Record a 5-second video of your team performing it and enter the original song’s title in the caption space.
Your team won’t be able to help but have a blast with this activity.
5. Trivia Time Machine
Step into the Outback Time Machine and take a trip through time, from the pre-pandemic 21st century through the decades all the way to the 60s.
This exciting, fast-paced virtual trivia game, packed with nostalgia and good vibes, is guaranteed to produce big laughs, friendly competition, and maybe even some chair-dancing.
Your virtual game show host will warm up guests with a couple of “tablehopper rounds” (breakout room mixers) and split you out into teams. Within minutes, your home office will be transformed into a game show stage with your very own game show buzzers!
And if you’re team is a bunch of trivia lovers, you might want to check out our list of the best virtual trivia games for work.
6. Jeoparty Social
With Jeoparty Social, your team will get to step into their very own Jeopardy-style game show experience, equipped with a buzzer, a professional actor as your host, and an immersive game show platform. Between each round of Jeopardy, your team will participate in social mixer challenges.
Get ready to test your trivia knowledge, hit that buzzer as fast as you can, stack up points for your team before time runs out, and wager a little bit (or a lot) in a round of Final Jeoparty to wrap it all up.
7. Wild Goose Chase
With this app-based scavenger hunt team building activity, your team will head out into the city to explore, bond, and tackle fun photo and video challenges.
Whether it’s for 20 people or 100, it’s a great way to build camaraderie and to exercise some valuable teamwork.
This is just a small handful of the short-turnaround team building activities we offer. If you want to learn more and discover the perfect option for your needs, get in touch with our team today. Our Employee Engagement Consultants can help you find the right solution.
Team Building Turmoil: Turning a Crisis Into a Win
Here’s something that might surprise you: sometimes the backup plan ends up being even better than the original.
Here’s why:
- More streamlined and focused: When you’re forced to pivot quickly, you often end up with an activity that’s better suited to your team’s actual needs. The original provider might have been steering you toward their most elaborate (and expensive) offering, while the replacement provider helps you identify what will truly achieve your goals.
- Your team appreciates your effort: When employees know you fought to make sure they still got their team building experience, it actually strengthens their trust in you as a planner and in the organization as a whole.
- You gain a reliable partner: You’ll walk away from this experience with a new, more reliable provider relationship. That’s valuable for every future event you plan.
Don’t think of this as salvaging a disaster. Think of it as an opportunity to discover a better solution and prove your problem-solving abilities.
5 Red Flags to Avoid to Ensure You’re Picking the Right Team Building Provider Next Time
When you’re choosing a team building provider for future events, watch out for these warning signs that could indicate potential problems:
- Slow or unclear communication during the planning process: If they’re hard to reach now, imagine how difficult they’ll be when you need urgent answers.
- Vague contracts or unclear policies: Make sure everything is spelled out: cancellation terms, refund policies, and what happens if they can’t deliver.
- Prices that seem too good to be true: Rock-bottom pricing often means cutting corners, and cutting corners means a higher risk of failure.
- Unwillingness to provide references or examples: Established providers should be happy to share case studies and put you in touch with past clients.
- A very new company with no track record: There’s nothing wrong with giving newer businesses a chance, but for high-stakes events, experience matters.
Trust your instincts. If something feels off during the planning process, it’s worth considering other options.
Ready to Recover From Your Team Building Crisis?
You can get through this, and your event can still be great. In fact, with the right partner, it can be even better than what you originally planned.
The key is taking action quickly, communicating confidently, and working with a provider who actually has the resources and expertise to deliver on short notice.
At Outback Team Building, we’ve helped countless organizations recover from situations just like yours. We know how to move fast without sacrificing quality, and we have the nationwide infrastructure to make it happen.
If you’re facing a team building emergency, talk to our team today.
Need help getting your team building event back on track?
Get in touch with our Employee Engagement Consultants to learn how you can plan a quick-turnaround team building activity for your workgroup.
