Most people don’t think of a business meeting or company conference as being playtime in the workplace.

But two Denver-based entrepreneurs, Katie Wall and Courtney Jacobson, realized that as little as 10 minutes of play can help build company culture. They believe that building culture through play is essential for increasing workplace happiness, reducing stress and retaining the best talent.

“When you play, you have a shared experience and that’s really powerful,” Jacobson said. “It allows for people’s diverse sets of strengths to come out, which can lead to new and different types of collaboration between team members.”

Jacobson and Wall are the co-founders of TheCultureBiz, which is an activity crate company. The activities included in the kits are “designed to engage employees, cultivate creativity, strengthen relationships and foster well-being,” states a news release.

There are two types of kits available. The CultureCrate is designed to enhance company culture through short bursts of play — 10 to 15-minute activities — during team meetings. These can be purchased as a one-time crate — though there are enough activities for an entire quarter — or as a quarterly subscription.

The RetreatCrate is designed to connect people during a team retreat or conference and includes both quick and longer — 30 to 45-minute — activities.

All the activities are original. A couple of examples are creating a special no-touch handshake, and sculpting a meal for your team out of clay.

“The activities showed us that there are creative ways of finding our way through issues that occur in our work together,” said Jess Christensen with Mountain Youth, which is a nonprofit youth organization based in Edwards, “and that multiple good and ‘right’ answers are possible.”

TheCultureBiz also offers interactive corporate workshops to help companies with culture development and team building, for example.

Jacobson and Wall first started discussing the idea for TheCultureBiz in summer 2019, and the two began piloting the in-person crates with various local businesses in February 2020. During the COVID-19 shutdowns, TheCultureBiz crates pivoted to virtual crates while people worked remotely. Jacobson and Wall are fully re-launching the in-person crates in September.

As more people are returning to the office after spending months of working remotely, Jacobson and Wall believe now is a good time for teams re-build their culture in person.

“Building a company culture used to be a luxury, but now it’s a necessity,” Wall said. “Team building is such a valuable investment for your company, but also incredibly important for the well-being and happiness of your people.”