With the prolonged prevalence of the pandemic, remote work is here to stay. Many companies have initiated Work from Home Programs globally offering remote work opportunities. Along with its benefits, remote work can become daunting for the employees due to increasing feelings of awkwardness, disconnection, and isolation among the remote workforce, significantly reducing productivity by almost 21%. This makes it vital for businesses to initiate effective an effective virtual Team Building activity.
To maintain a pleasant company culture and create an inclusive and comfortable workforce environment, team leaders need to incorporate activities that can reinforce employee connections and develop meaningful and ice-breaking interactions.
Strategies for Virtual Team Building Activity
Businesses are actively seeking ideas for a virtual team-building activity where employees can break from the corporate discussions and take some time out to connect amongst themselves socially. With budget being a significant concern for the companies, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of strategically contrived Virtual Team Building activities to make meetings effective.
With the many options to explore through smart technology, devising exciting activities for the employees to keep your virtual sphere creative and boost morale has become a fairly simple task.
Let’s find out the most effective virtual team-building activities.
1. Go for a Virtual Game Session
There’s more you can do with your colleagues than follow the mundane work routine. Give some energy to the group by bonding over sessions that interest and excite everyone. Asking your employees connect over budget-friendly online games can create a little bit of laughter, rejoicing the work environment, and explore one another’s strengths and weaknesses.
Here are a few simple yet mind-boggling games you can initiate before the beginning or end of the team activity. You can find numerous games online for multiple players to solve puzzles, trivia, and riddles that help build a cohesive team.
- Bond over an interesting game of charades where one member carries out the actions while others make hysterical guesses.
- A small group can also connect over a skribbl.io game, entailing random drawing by one person and guessing by the others. To make the game even more intense, choose the variables such as the number of rounds and drawing time in the private meeting room.
2. Have a Virtual Dance Party?
Rejuvenate the spirits of the team by incorporating some mettlesome activities. Who doesn’t love to dance around on their favorite songs? Boost the energy of your employees by conducting a virtual dance party. Twisting and shaking lets the team members come out of their comfort zones and exhibit their much-needed euphoria amidst the work stress.
You could set a schedule and rock the dance party at the beginning of the weekend on a Friday evening or during a downbeat midweek. A rollicking break of merely a few minutes can play a vital role in raising the employees’ productivity.
How about making it an even more charged experience by calling out your fam, kids, and roommates around as well!
3. Connect in a Game Zoned Virtual Office
With virtual meetings becoming the norm, numerous platforms have sprung up to help break the monotony of typical video call formats. Gather is one such interactive forum with an interface of an 8-bit video game, allowing up to 25 participants, adding a spark to routine meetings.
Begin the meeting by choosing your preferred virtual environment, whether the team wants it to be a snug office space, an explorative library, or a casual coffee shop, among many others. Once you’ve chosen your avatar, you can maneuver around the virtual room and interact with other teammates using the controls of your computer.
4. Explore Different Destinations
Often, Virtual teams tend to have a great deal of diversity, with coworkers being widely distributed across the globe. It’s much easier to begin conversing about the place you live rather than directly open up about yourself.
5. Play the Time Zone Challenge
A rather simple yet fun way to let the teammates connect over a formal video conference is by inquiring about each person’s time zone. This could be made thrilling by turning it into a challenge where coworkers have to guess the time zone of their fellow employees by taking cues from the information they provide.
6. Comparison of Prices
Team building activities are much easier with diverse groups since there is so much to probe about. Another fascinating activity is to assess the variation in prices of common items across multiple countries. With members well distributed across the globe, each participant can develop an object, and an interesting discussion regarding the value of that item in everyone’s country can follow. The participant can make a creative sales pitch about the product without everyone guessing its price. Sometimes, the stark variations in the price of a commodity among different nations can be appalling to discover.
7. Sharing Knowledge over Ted Talks
Connecting with your corporate mates can happen well if you discuss topics that align with everyone’s interests while at the same time enhancing their knowledge. To enable your team members to bond well and delve into productive discussions, create a knowledge-sharing activity for each session.
Ask employees to come forward and share some information regarding tech, efficiency, or current economic activities. An informative discussion over a Brown Bag lunch can take place for a few minutes where the employees can actively participate.
Such an informal discussion plays a role in bringing the team closer, provides an opportunity for the members to flaunt their learnings and experiences, and unveils the strengths and weaknesses of the employees.
8. Tap The Inner Chefs of The Team
Amongst the many strategies, an effective team-building activity is one where employees can take a complete break from the office environment and move to a new spot in their house. Create some interesting vibes and pour in some energy for the group by hosting a virtual baking challenge or a cooking workshop. Conduct a toll before the session to see what the majority prefers.
Interacting with your teammates at the kitchen counter, flaunting your culinary skills, and learning some interesting tips over virtual live streaming is a fun, engaging, and budget-friendly way to create variation in the work environment and sustain a creative workplace culture.
However, sometimes this virtual team-building activity might be seen as grueling for the team leaders as having the right ingredients at hand might be a challenge for all the teammates, so there’s an easier and cheaper way to go about it. All the team members are given a grocery list before the workshop, funded by the organization, and then the whole team can carry on with their cooking, bonding in their kitchens.
9. Ice Breakers
An effective virtual team-building activity becomes paramount when members are physically apart and unaware of the other teammates, making it difficult to cohesively share ideas and yield fruitful results. Engaging in random icebreakers for remote teams paves an opportunity to know fellow employees better and develop personal connections, mitigating any feelings of awkwardness or discomfort. This ultimately helps the workers contribute more passionately and execute the project better.
An exciting ice-breaking virtual team-building activity at the beginning of the meeting can significantly raise the productivity of the meeting, making it more conducive and effective.
10. How Much Do You Know Your Team?
Form a few generic questions regarding the teammates that need to be answered anonymously. Get the team to answer these questions and reveal the answers to all the members, giving them a chance to guess the teammate’s responses as they attempt to pair the right answers.
An interesting discussion can follow based on the intriguing responses of the teammates.
11. Name the Song
You can use one of the many online platforms to create a group messaging chain. The game begins with one participant sending in emojis that give hints for the last played song on their playlist, with the rest of the team having to guess the song’s name.
Remember to put on a timer to make the virtual team-building activity challenge more competitive and thrilling.
12. Scavenger Hunt Programs
Boost the energy and morale of the team by bringing all the participants together in a virtual scavenger hunt. As interesting as it sounds, this virtual team-building activity is a surefire way for the employees to socially connect with their coworkers and learn random facts about them. This could be anything such as the member with the most awards or a singer hidden in them.
Several platforms offer integrated video chats, mobile apps, and an event host to spark up the game even more.
Adopt these fun and affordable ideas as a virtual team-building activity and witness the transitioning performance of your team. Maintaining and retaining a virtual sphere is undoubtedly a challenging task for businesses. Still, when done the right way, these measures can profoundly strengthen the teams, boost their confidence and bring about prolific outcomes.
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