Spin the Names

Office parties and team events have a reputation problem. They’re often awkward, feel mandatory, and rely on the same tired formats that everyone endures rather than enjoys.

A random name wheel won’t fix every office event — but it eliminates several of the specific friction points that make them fall flat, and it creates some genuine moments of surprise and laughter. Here’s how.

Secret Santa and Gift Exchanges

This is probably the most common use case for a random wheel at work, and it’s the one that benefits the most from transparency.

The problem with traditional methods: Someone is in charge of assignment. People wonder if assignments were truly random. Did the manager give themselves an easy draw? Did someone get their ex? Did the coordinator arrange convenient pairs?

The solution: Do the assignment live, at a team meeting or holiday kickoff event. Open the wheel with every participant’s name, spin in sequence to build pairs, and exclude anyone from picking themselves with a quick respin if it happens.

The live draw turns a behind-the-scenes admin task into a 10-minute event with genuine energy. People react when they see who they drew. It becomes a moment.

Team-Building Activity Groups

Most team-building activities require breaking into groups. Self-selection produces the same cliques every time. Pre-assigned groups feel like the organizer is engineering social outcomes.

Random grouping is the right call because it:

Pairs people who don’t normally work together
Removes any perception of the organizer playing favorites
Creates surprising combinations that often produce the most fun results

Spin in front of the room. Assign groups as names come up. Let each group pick their own team name before the activity starts — it creates immediate group identity and takes about 60 seconds.

Event Icebreakers

The classic icebreaker problem: everyone either answers the same question in order (predictable, boring) or volunteers first (same extroverts, every time, with everyone else relieved they didn’t have to go).

Random selection with a visible wheel creates a different dynamic. Add everyone’s name. Spin. Whoever comes up answers a question, shares a fact, or does the activity. Then they spin for the next person.

This creates a genuine chain of participation, distributes speaking time, and adds a layer of suspense to what would otherwise be a rote exercise.

Good icebreaker formats for random selection:

Two truths and a lie (the wheel picks who goes, everyone guesses)
Share your best vacation photo on your phone (personal, visual, easy)
What’s a skill you have that nobody at work knows about?
What’s the most recent thing you learned?

Raffle Drawings at Company Events

Company events often include prize drawings: gift cards, experience vouchers, merchandise, extra PTO. A random wheel is the right tool here — visible, fair, exciting.

Add every attendee’s name. Project the wheel on the event screen. Let someone from the audience trigger the spin. The buildup and reveal is genuinely exciting, especially when stakes are high (a vacation day or a nice prize).

For events with hundreds of attendees, you can run a preliminary draw to narrow the pool to 10–15 finalists, then do a live final spin for the main prizes.

Meeting Icebreakers and Check-Ins

This one scales down beautifully to regular team meetings. At the start of a weekly all-hands or team standup, spin to pick who does the icebreaker question or gives the first update.

Over time, this creates a rhythm:

Everyone knows the wheel will be used
Everyone stays present because they might be next
The speaking order varies, so the same person isn’t always setting the tone
It takes about five seconds to run and costs zero planning

End-of-Year Recognition and Awards

End-of-year events often include team awards — most collaborative, funniest moment, best Slack reaction, hardest worker on the holiday push. Some categories are meritocratic and should stay that way. But for fun, subjective categories where multiple people genuinely qualify, a wheel adds energy to the announcement.

Nominate finalists by vote, then spin for the winner live at the event. The wheel doesn’t diminish the recognition — everyone nominated deserved it, and the winner was chosen fairly from among the deserving.

Making It Land Well

A few things that make the difference between “cute gimmick” and “actually fun”:

Project it visibly. Whether you’re in-person on a conference room screen or remote on a shared screen, everyone needs to see the wheel. The visual is the whole point.

Move quickly. Don’t over-explain. Open the wheel, explain what you’re doing in one sentence, spin. The energy dies if you spend five minutes setting up a ten-second moment.

Commit to the result. The wheel picked Marketing for the first trivia question, even though they’re clearly overmatched by Engineering. Play it straight. The mismatches are often the funniest outcomes.

Let different people trigger the spin. Rotating who hits the button distributes ownership of the tool and makes it feel like something the group is doing together, not something being done to them.

Try Spin the Names for your next event — free to use, works on any device, no sign-up required.