How many hosts do you need for a group activity

Every enquiry brings up the same question: how many people actually need to be there. There's almost no answer to that online, even though it's the item where organising it yourself most often falls apart. Below you'll find the ratios per group size and per type of activity, what a host actually does during those three hours, when you need to add one, and what happens in practice if you try it with too few people.

What a host actually does

You can't answer how many hosts you need without first naming the tasks. In a three-hour programme there are six, and they all happen at once.

• Explaining: the rules of the activity, in under a minute, to a group that has just arrived and is still chatting about the previous activity. Again with every new team.
• Keeping time: starting, counting down, calling time. An activity that's allowed four minutes and takes six seems harmless, but five of those add up to ten minutes of overrun.
• Recording scores: noting who got what and passing it on to whoever keeps the final standings. This has to be done by someone who isn't playing, otherwise you get a debate at the end.
• Safety: watching who's lined up, stepping in before it goes wrong, checking equipment between rounds. With water, height or heavy equipment this is the main task, not a side task.
• Steering the energy: seeing that a group doesn't get it or that an activity isn't working, and adjusting the set-up on the fly. This is the difference between someone who runs a game and someone who leads the programme.
• Resetting equipment: between two teams the activity has to be back at its starting position. With water, building elements and puzzles that takes one to two minutes per changeover.

Those six tasks fit into one person for one activity. As soon as two activities run at the same time, they no longer fit into one person, because explaining and keeping time happen in two places at once.

The basic ratio per group size

For a programme with one activity at a time, without water, height or children, we use these ratios.

• 6 to 15 participants: one host. They do everything, including the score. This works because the whole group is within earshot.
• 15 to 30 participants: one host plus someone to keep score and time. With thirty people the back half can no longer hear the explanation properly, so the second person also helps pass it on.
• 30 to 45 participants: two hosts plus a game leader. From here the group works in teams, and teams need someone to speak to them.
• 45 to 60 participants: three hosts plus a game leader. At this scale sound is a task in itself: without a microphone or speaker the explanation doesn't reach half the group.

Above sixty the calculation changes. You're no longer working with one activity but with blocks that run at the same time, and then the rule in the next section applies. How a programme at that scale is put together is covered in the article on group games for a large group.

The second rule: one per activity

This is where most plans go wrong. As soon as several activities run at once, what counts isn't the number of participants but the number of activities.

A team games day with five activities needs five hosts, even if there are only thirty people. Each activity needs someone who explains, keeps time and notes the score, and you can't split those tasks across two activities because they're being played at the same moment. On top of that comes one game leader who keeps an eye on the whole, signals the rotations and keeps the final standings.

Thirty participants with five activities therefore need more people than sixty participants with two activities. That's counterintuitive, and it's the reason a self-organised team games day so often starts with too few people. If you want more activities but don't have the people, you can put two activities side by side and add one host, as long as they're activities with a short explanation and no safety risk.

By type of activity

The ratio differs greatly by type of programme. These are the formats we run most, with the staffing that goes with them.

• Quiz or game show: one presenter plus one person for technology and scoring. That stays the same from twenty to well over a hundred participants, because everything runs through one central point.
• Team games day or course with stations: one host per activity plus a game leader. With six activities that's seven people who aren't taking part.
• Task game where teams choose their own route: one host per three to four teams, spread across the site, plus a central point where the scores come in.
• City game or scavenger hunt through an area: one host per two to three teams, because the group is out of sight and you need to be reachable if a team gets stuck or loses its way.
• Physical activities with equipment, such as an assault course or archery: one instructor per piece of equipment or lane, and they can't do anything else. This is the only category where doubling up really isn't possible.
• Family day with children and parents: one host per activity plus one per eight children who isn't tied to an activity and walks around. The parents are present but can't be counted on as supervision, because they're busy chatting.
• Team building with a small group: one host for six to fifteen people, but someone who can lead the conversation after the exercise. With this format the value lies in the debrief and not in the supervision.

A team games day and an assault course are therefore at the heavy end of this list, and a quiz at the light end. When choosing a programme, that difference is often more important than the price of the equipment.

When you need one extra

On top of the basic ratio there are six situations in which you add one. They come up more often than you'd think and they stack: two of these situations at once means two extra people.

• Children under twelve: one host per six to eight children under eight, one per ten for ages eight to twelve. Children wander off, need the toilet and need the explanation twice.
• Several locations or a spread-out site: as soon as not everything can be seen from one spot, the game leader can no longer step in. Every separate spot needs its own person, even if there are only twelve people standing there.
• Several activities at once: the rule from the previous section. One per activity, with no exceptions for activities with equipment or water.
• Water, height or heavy equipment: with these activities supervision is the main task. The person supervising can't also keep score, so there are two people there.
• Programme longer than three hours: after three hours of talking and directing, a host is spent. For a full day, plan for a changeover, meaning someone extra who can take over a station.
• A group that doesn't know each other: then nothing happens on its own. For the first twenty minutes it takes more steering to get people into teams and talking, and that needs someone who does nothing but that.

One more situation that's rarely mentioned: a programme in the dark or in the evening. Without daylight you need someone who only watches the lighting and the walking routes, because what's a minor edge in daylight is a tripping hazard in the dark.

The roles you shouldn't double up

Many roles can be combined. Three can't, and those are exactly the three that get merged first when you organise it yourself.

The scorekeeper can't be a participant. Someone who's on a team and also counts the points will be asked at the end of the afternoon whether the count is right. Even if it is, the argument has already started.

The game leader can't run a station. As soon as the person who signals the rotations is running an activity themselves, the signalling happens too late and the whole rotation slips. This is the role that gets dropped first in tight plans, and it's where overrun comes from.

The organiser can't also be a participant. That's the hardest one, because the person arranging the outing wants to be part of it. In practice it doesn't work: whoever leads the programme misses their own outing. For many clients that's the reason to outsource it, apart from the equipment.

What happens with too few hosts

This doesn't fall apart all at once. It sags, in a fixed order, and with each step it's harder to reverse.

First comes overrun. Without someone to call the time, every activity takes five to ten minutes longer than planned, because nobody picks the moment to call time. With five activities that's half an hour, and that half hour comes off the last activity or off the break.

Then comes the waiting. If fewer stations are open than there are teams, one team is always standing around with nothing to do. That's when the phones come out, and you don't get that attention back.

Next comes the argument. Scores that weren't written down properly, rules explained differently to one team than to another, an activity that lasted four minutes for one and six for the other. At the end the result doesn't match what everyone saw, and the whole afternoon is reduced to a debate about points.

With physical activities a safety problem comes on top. A tug of war that goes on too long, an assault course that two people go up at once, a bow picked up when nobody's looking. Those aren't exceptional scenarios but the normal course of events on a field where the host's attention is wanted in three places.

And finally: nobody steering. A programme where nobody has an overview can't be adjusted when it turns out an activity isn't working. That's a waste, because it's precisely the adjusting on the go that makes an afternoon good.

A worked example

Forty employees, a three-and-a-half-hour afternoon programme on a field at the company, five activities, one of which involves water. Four teams of ten.

Five activities need five hosts. The water activity needs one more, because there someone tops up the equipment and someone else notes the score. On top of that comes one game leader for the time, the rotations and the final standings. In total that's seven people who aren't taking part, for forty participants.

If you want to bring that down to four people, the answer isn't to work harder but to change the programme. Three activities instead of five, each activity longer, and two rounds instead of five. That gives a calmer afternoon with the same participants and the same time. Fewer activities with enough hosts is always better than more activities with too few.

How we do it

We're based in Enschede at Piet Heinstraat 12 and come to the client's venue with equipment and hosts, anywhere in the Netherlands. We design and build the programmes ourselves, so we know for each activity how many people are tied to it, and that's stated in the proposal. Groups of roughly six to sixty people fit the standard set-up, and for larger groups we calculate the staffing separately.

Set-up takes about an hour and falls outside the programme duration, so the hosts are ready before the first participant walks in. A compact concept starts at €195, more extensive bespoke programmes at €550, and we price large projects on request. In all cases the hosting is included in the price and doesn't come on top per hour.

If you're not sure whether your group can be handled with your own people, that's a question you can ask in a single email. Use the quote form or via the contact form to send the number of participants, the duration and what you have in mind. We'll reply within one working day, and if it works fine with your own hosts, we'll tell you that too.

What you get from this

Don't count per participant but per activity. One host per activity running at the same time, plus one game leader who doesn't run a station. For a programme with one activity, count one host per fifteen to twenty people. Add one for children, for a spread-out site, for water or height, for a programme longer than three hours and for a group that doesn't know each other.

If you're short of people, cut activities rather than hosts. Further reading on the set-up itself: organising a team games day and twelve team games day activities, with what you need for each. What we run is listed under activities, team outings, company outings and family days.