World Kindness Day is Friday, November 13. It is the perfect excuse to stop, look up from the screen and actually connect with the people you work beside every day.

Kindness at work does not have to mean a big budget or a long offsite. The best moments are small, playful and shared. They turn coworkers into teammates, and teammates into people who look out for each other.

Here are 11 World Kindness Day activities for work that your team can do in a lunch break, a team meeting or across the whole week.

11 World Kindness Day activities for work

  1. Start the meeting with PLAY. Open your next team meeting with two minutes of play before the agenda. A quick round of Rock, Paper, Scissors gets everyone laughing and loosens up the room.
  2. Give out Play Missions. Hand each person one small mission for the day, like learning a coworker’s favorite song or saying thank you to someone outside your team.
  3. Write gratitude notes. Leave a short, handwritten note on a coworker’s desk or chair. Specific beats general: name one thing they did that made a difference.
  4. Host a kindness coffee hour. Pair people who rarely work together for 15 minutes of coffee and conversation. No work talk allowed.
  5. Create a kindness wall. Put up a board where anyone can post a shout-out. By Friday afternoon, it becomes a picture of everything your team appreciates about each other.
  6. Play it forward with a stranger. Invite your team to do one kind act outside the office: buy a coffee for the next person in line, or hold the elevator with a smile.
  7. Run a no-meeting hour of play. Block one hour on the calendar for games, bubbles or a quick outdoor walk. Rest and play recharge people more than another status update.
  8. Lunch-and-learn on connection. Bring in a speaker for a 45-minute session on why play and kindness matter at work, and what to do about it on Monday.
  9. Volunteer together. Turn the day into a corporate community service event. Serve meals, clean up a park or bring PLAY to a local school or neighborhood.
  10. Celebrate the quiet helpers. Ask managers to recognize the people who make things run but rarely get noticed.
  11. Make it last past November 13. Choose one kindness habit to keep going every month, like a weekly shout-out or a monthly Play Mission, so kindness becomes how your team works.

How The Play Way brings it to your team

The Play Way turns kindness from a nice idea into a skill your team practices. Every session follows the same three steps.

  1. Play. We open with a moment of PLAY the whole room joins. People feel connection before anyone explains it.
  2. Hear. A short, true story shows why play and kindness matter, at work and in life.
  3. Carry. Everyone leaves with a Play Mission: a skill for being kind, playful and approachable that they carry back to work.

And the fun does not end when the session does. Team members can become Play Ninjas and lead Play Missions all year long. Sessions run in person in Los Angeles or virtually, for workplaces, schools and communities.

Bring PLAY to your team this Kindness Week

Ready to make World Kindness Day the start of something bigger? Plan your team’s PLAY experience for the week of November 9 to 13, or book a holiday or January kickoff session.

Want to see The Play Way in action first? Join us for LA Metro PlayDay on Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, from 11 AM to 1 PM at the Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Brea Metro stations. PLAY begins at 11:11!

Together, let’s help build humanity, one playful act of kindness at a time.