Corporate Onboarding Scavenger Hunts
New-hire orientation does not have to mean a stack of paperwork and a slide deck nobody finishes. Build a hunt that walks employees through the building, introduces them to the team, and quizzes them on the handbook — then watch the whole thing land in a live feed.
Why an onboarding hunt beats an orientation deck
Day one is mostly nerves, forms, and being walked around by someone who has done it forty times. A hunt swaps the passive parts for something new hires do themselves.
A first day people talk about
The first morning is the one new hires describe to their friends that evening. A hunt gives them a reason to walk the floor, talk to people, and finish with a story instead of a headache.
Names and faces, not an org chart
Missions that require a selfie or a fifteen-second intro get new hires talking to people they would otherwise not meet for a month. An org chart cannot do that.
Handbook facts that actually stick
Turning policy into trivia missions makes someone look the answer up once and recall it under mild competitive pressure — which beats skimming a PDF they will never open again.
Onboarding mission ideas you can copy
Every line below is a mission you could paste straight into Scavvy. The tag shows which of the four mission types it uses.
The office tour
Replace the walk-around with a loop new hires run themselves, in teams of two or three.
- gps Check in at the fire exit nearest your new desk — the one you would actually use.
- photo Photograph the coffee machine and caption it with the name of whoever showed you how it works.
- gps Check in outside the wellness room, so you know where it is before the day you need it.
- photo Team selfie at the swag wall, everyone wearing something with the logo on it.
- trivia Which floor is the IT help desk on, and what are its hours?
Meet the team
The missions that force a hello. These are the ones people quote back months later.
- photo Get a selfie with someone from three different departments — including one whose job you cannot yet explain.
- video Ask a teammate for fifteen seconds on the one thing they wish they had known in their first week.
- photo Find the desk of the person who interviewed you and leave something small on it.
- trivia Who do you ask to get a conference room unlocked at short notice?
- video Record the twenty-second intro that will get posted in the team channel: name, role, and one thing you are unreasonably enthusiastic about.
Systems and paperwork
The unavoidable admin, rebuilt as active recall instead of a read-through.
- trivia How much notice does PTO need, and who approves it?
- photo Screenshot your finished profile in the HR portal — photo, title, pronouns, the lot.
- trivia Name the provider that handles our 401(k).
- photo Screenshot your laptop with the VPN connected.
- trivia A customer emails at 9pm on a Friday. Who is on call, and where is that rota posted?
Remote and hybrid hires
Same hunt, no building. Drop the GPS check-ins and the rest works from a kitchen table.
- video Twenty seconds introducing yourself to the team channel, filmed wherever you actually work.
- photo Show us your desk setup. Bonus points for a pet in frame.
- trivia Find it in the handbook: what response time do we promise customers?
- photo Screenshot your calendar with your first three 1:1s already booked in.
- video Fifteen seconds on the part of the product you understand least. We will use it to fix the training.
A 45-minute onboarding hunt, start to finish
One workable shape for a first-day hunt. Adjust the middle two blocks to the size of your office.
Kick off in the room you are already in
HR shares the invite link on screen. New hires join on their phones and split into teams of three, ideally mixing people who have not met.
The building loop
GPS check-ins and photo missions push teams through the floor: fire exits, the wellness room, the kitchen, the swag wall.
People missions
Teams hunt down selfies and fifteen-second intros from across departments. This is the loud part, and it is the part that works.
The handbook round
Everyone sits back down for trivia on PTO, expenses, on-call and security. Ten minutes of looking things up beats an hour of being told them.
Leaderboard and the wall of photos
Put the feed and leaderboard on the big screen and hand out something small. Nobody remembers the slide deck. They remember this.
Setting one up
Most of the work is deciding what a new hire genuinely needs to know. The building part takes an afternoon.
Write the missions
Walk your own floor with your phone and write missions as you go. Fifteen to twenty is plenty for a 45-minute hunt across photo, video, GPS and trivia.
Share the invite link
Drop the link into the first-day calendar invite or put it on screen at kickoff. New hires join in the free Scavvy app — there is nothing for IT to deploy.
Watch the feed fill up
Submissions arrive in a live feed the whole cohort can like and comment on, with a leaderboard alongside it. Those photos are also your best recruiting content.
Onboarding hunt questions
Forty-five to sixty minutes is the sweet spot on a first day — long enough to cover the building and the people, short enough that it does not eat the whole morning. If you are including handbook trivia, budget an extra ten minutes for people to actually look the answers up.
Players join from an invite link and play in the free Scavvy app on iOS or Android. There is nothing to deploy to company laptops, and playing is free for every player — only the person creating the experience pays.
Yes. Build the hunt from photo, video and trivia missions, skip the GPS check-ins, and a remote hire runs the same missions from home and appears on the same leaderboard as everyone in the office.
That is the reason to write it down once. The fire exits do not move and the 401(k) provider does not change monthly, so the same set of missions carries from cohort to cohort with the occasional edit.
Pricing is one-time and set by player count — $7.99 for up to 10 players, $19.99 for up to 30. Teams onboarding every month usually prefer the $99.99 unlimited monthly plan. See the pricing page for the full breakdown.
Give your next new hire a first day worth posting about
Build the hunt once and run it for every cohort after. Creating is free to try, and playing is always free for every player.