Remote Team Building Activities & Ideas (Free)
Published 27 Jan 2022 · Updated 27 Jan 2022
By Dini Rengganing Suci
When everyone is at the office together, there are many simple and enjoyable methods to develop a team—have a team lunch, take an afternoon off to go bowling as a group, or celebrate the end of a large project with a pleasant meal out. Holding team-building activities, on the other hand, can be a lot more difficult when everyone is working remotely. Despite the hurdles, remote team-building isn’t impossible, and introducing activities to assist it will help your staff better manage their telecommuting. Here are ten methods to keep your team together when everyone is working remotely.
1. Make use of video conferences (But in Moderation)
With today’s video technology, it’s simple to match faces to names (for those who’ve always worked remotely) or connect with familiar coworkers you see every day in the office on a regular basis. A video meeting can aid in maintaining a sense of reality and face-to-face communication. But exercise caution and don’t overdo it. Video chats can be taxing since they need greater concentration, and every meeting—fun or stressful—takes place in the same chair at the same workstation.
2. Have a break from your work and take a virtual coffee break.
It doesn’t have to be all work all of the time when you work online. If you’re at work, you’ll meet up with coworkers in the breakroom or stand at a colleague’s desk to discuss last night’s popular television show. Take a virtual coffee break with team colleagues and talk about anything other than work. Every day, set up 15 minutes for this virtual talk. During the coffee break, you can conduct an online poll on any issue. Avoid thorny or political subjects. Most online meeting platforms allow the host to distribute a multiple-choice poll to all attendees and display the results on a graph. This can result in a lot of virtual laughter or even team-building among people who hold opposing viewpoints.
3. Make a daily check-in
When everyone works in the same place, it’s simpler to see what everyone else is up on, and it’s natural to have dialogues about it. When everyone is working remotely, though, you may not be aware of what other teams are working on or how everything works together. As a manager, you may foster teamwork by keeping everyone informed about why their current project is important to the firm as a whole and how it interacts with the work of other teams.
4. Commemorate significant events and team accomplishments.
Office baby showers, birthday parties, wedding receptions, and holiday celebrations are all common. These team-building activities get lost in the ether when you’re working remotely. Although you won’t be able to gather everyone for a slice of cake, the company can send a gift to the birthday person’s home, and everyone can sing happy birthday at a remote staff meeting. If a remote team achieves a business goal, while you may not be able to celebrate in person, make sure the team is recognized and rewarded.
5. Use your phone as much as possible.
When you’re working remotely, texting, instant messaging, Slack, regular email, and other forms of electronic communication can rapidly become the norm. Friends, on the other hand, have been found in studies to be unable to detect tone in emails. How do you expect coworkers who don’t know you that well to determine out if you’re kidding or serious, sarcastic or rude? Instead, get on the phone. Making your team members feel valued is a crucial component of developing a remote team. Consider using your phone to tell at least one person every day what you like about them or their work.
6. Designate events as team-building exercises for remote workers.
When it comes to responding to emails, how fast should your team do so? Is it OK to have a 24-hour turnaround time for emails, but only minutes for Slack messages? Do your staff need to respond to an email sent at 11:00 p.m. straight away, or can they wait until 9:30 a.m. tomorrow? When it comes to communication, your team’s standards should be explicit, and you may even make setting them up into a remote team-building activity. This event allows you to work together on a project, and the established conventions can help to reduce stress and confusion. You’re probably familiar with a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis as a second example. Rather than presenting a completed SWOT to your remote meeting attendees, provide them a link to a blank SWOT slide on Google Slides and ask them to all work on it at the same time. You’ll have a completed SWOT that portrays the group’s collective efforts in just two minutes.
7. Make it a point to do fun things as part of your remote team building activities.
Jack and Jill become uninteresting children if they spend all of their time working. Share a humorous TikTok video (make it work-appropriate), play a round of Words With Friends, perform a team crossword problem, or play Pictionary.
The key is to do something enjoyable for your group. Work in some together-time to just enjoy each other’s company. Each team can have their own likes and dislikes.
8. Sending Care Packages
A box of snacks, a pair of new fancy pens, or a box of Clorox wipes can help employees feel that the manager and the firm care. These packages should be sent from the company rather than from the individual. For example, PostcardMania’s HR department and CEO wanted to make sure that employees realized how much they were valued (especially those with the added responsibility of looking after their school-aged kids). They sent art-themed care packages to the kids, including crayons, markers, paint, and paper, giving them plenty of opportunities to let their imaginations run wild while giving the parents some much-needed breathing room. PostcardMania will choose 12 winners to receive a prize and have their artwork included in a forthcoming calendar once the youngsters have completed their masterpieces.
9. Help local businesses and employee-favorite causes.
Maintaining a culture of volunteerism when employees work remotely and away from companies that encourage team-building activities like raising money for charity, collecting canned goods for food banks, and knitting blankets for babies at local hospitals can be difficult but still useful. Temple For example, Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, established food banks by contributing canned goods and other necessities to a central place from which they were given to those in need. This was a larger version of their regular food bank, which occurs twice a month. The venture was discussed entirely via the internet.
10. Take use of online learning
Virtual training can bring remote employees together to work on the same project or learn something new. Companies can stream yoga or workout videos as well as actual instructional seminars on topics like communication improvement that teams chose to attend together. Sending weekly Wellbeing Wednesday emails on a specific issue to help employees and their families cope is another excellent method to maintain engagement. The need for services for employee wellness was instantly realized by Jackie Baumgarten, CEO and Co-Founder of Boatsetter (the Airbnb of boat rentals). She started an employee wellness email to remind the team of the measures they could be taking to be healthy, balance family obligations, and manage stress.
Quick Tips to Strengthen Your Virtual Team Building
Virtual team building events aren’t the only thing Unexpected Virtual Tours conducts. We’re also a remote company, so we take use of these free team-building activities ourselves. Here are four easy strategies for using free virtual team building to improve team cohesion:
Include Video Meetings In Your Company’s Culture
When you don’t see your teammates on screen, it’s easy to become disengaged. However, as soon as you switch on the camera, you begin interacting with your coworkers. Video is a low-cost, easy-to-use tool that can make a big difference! When feasible, encourage your staff to leave their cameras on.
To Engage Introverts, Use Breakout Rooms.
It’s critical in a virtual event that the extroverts don’t take over. Break up your group into smaller breakout rooms to engage introverts. In fact, in a small group setting, introverts generally have an easier time speaking. In a video call, you can also encourage everyone to use the text chat tool. Employees are sometimes more comfortable typing their thoughts than speaking them out loud!
Include Team Building In Your Regular Meetings.
While it’s critical to get things done, it’s also critical to establish a strong team. A disjointed crew is more prone to lose interest in the business. Employees that are detached are also more likely to abandon the organization and produce substandard work. To address this problem, set aside time at the start of each meeting to simply talk about personal matters.
Slack Can Be Used For Much More Than Work.
It’s tough to build team cohesion if your Slack channel is limited to work-related conversations. Make Slack your virtual water cooler, as well as the place to celebrate your team’s triumphs.
FAQs
What is virtual team building?
The practice of creating ties and collaboration skills with distant personnel is known as virtual team building. Team building activities during conference calls, as well as scheduling virtual team gatherings, are examples of these initiatives. The purpose of these exercises is to increase communication and teamwork skills while also increasing job satisfaction and engagement. “Virtual team bonding” and “remote team building” are terms used to describe these activities, games, and ideas.
How do you do team building virtually?
It is relatively simple to form a virtual team. You must organize engaging games and activities for your group, just as you would in person. You can hire an event planner or organize your own virtual teambuilding activities. Icebreaker questions are a simple way to get started with online team building.
What are some fun virtual activities?
There are a plethora of virtual activities from which to pick. Icebreaker questions, Never Have I Ever, and “Can you hear me now?” are some of the most enjoyable online team building activities. “, “Something in Common,” and “Mister Rogers Calls.”
Why is team building important for remote teams?
Building virtual teams is crucial since it aids in the development of happy, engaged, and productive distant teams. Employees who work from home frequently struggle to feel connected to their coworkers and the company, and this is especially true during quarantine. You may not only mimic, but even exceed, the engagement of office-based teams by investing in remote team building activities.
How do you make a virtual meeting more fun?
Incorporating non-work virtual team games and activities into a virtual conference is a simple approach to make it more enjoyable. You may include trivia questions or a quick dance party, for example. We advocate following The 8% Rule, which states that entertaining virtual team building exercises should take up 8% of each meeting’s duration.
How do you create a team remotely?
Investing time and effort in virtual team activities is one technique to form a team remotely. Give your employees enjoyable shared experiences, and they will reward you with a productive team. You must improve both group dynamics and one-on-one dynamics to have the most impact. As a result, you can organize virtual team-building activities like as virtual happy hours and virtual Christmas parties, as well as paired activities like Mister Rogers Calls.
What are the most effective remote team building activities?
The greatest remote team building exercises teach professional skills without coming across as cheesy. As a result of the process, a remote employee should learn more about his or her company, role, and teammates.
How do you bond with a remote team?
The most effective technique to bring a distant team together is through non-lame virtual games and activities. The act of spending more quality time together is more important than whether you choose pub trivia, “get to know you” questions, or an online workshop.
What are virtual team building exercises?
Virtual team building exercises are online group activities that help employees refine their skills and strengthen their bonds with one another. These activities can be thought of as a teamwork workout.
What are virtual team building challenges?
Virtual team development challenges are competitive games or tournaments that you can play with a distant team. These tasks are intended to strengthen remote workers’ friendships and team bonds. For example, a 30-day exercise challenge or a typing speed race are two examples of these challenges.
What are virtual team building games?
Virtual team development games are entertaining games that may be played through Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other virtual conferencing platforms. These activities are designed to entertain and engage distant teams while also fostering a sense of community among them.