While working remotely has its perks, it can be challenging to find a sense of community among your colleagues, connect with them, or work together as a team at times. Many aspects of remote work and communication among colleagues are completed asynchronously and independent of other employees.
Since remote work has reached an all-time high in recent years, it has become clear that virtual team building is far more different than traditional in-person team building activities.
Below, we have compiled a list of some of the best virtual team-building activities for your remote teams. The goal of these activities is to help you skyrocket your company culture and increase employee engagement.
Why is Virtual Team Building Important?
When opting for remote work, there is always a risk of isolation, lack of involvement, a sense of community, and being left out of decision-making conversations that may take place. When team members feel like they are on the outskirts of the company and distant, they feel less comfortable reaching out for assistance, questions, or collaborating with other members of their remote team.
That's why virtual team building is essential for remote workers in organizations. They help remove communication barriers and create an open, helpful work environment where people still feel comfortable and connected to their colleagues, despite the obvious distance between them.
Virtual team building allows colleagues to learn more about each other, learn from each other, and help create a sense of community and belonging across teams. The activities can help team members boost morale and engagement and lead to higher productivity, job satisfaction, and employee retention rates.
Virtual Team Building Activities
#1. Virtual Lunch Breaks
Many team members eat or go out to lunch together in traditional office settings or workplaces. The social aspect of working together is one of the most rewarding aspects of working in a physical workplace. We suggest not only lunch, but virtual coffee breaks, happy hour, or just a break for socializing is a good place to start to get your team more comfortable and connected.
Plan a virtual lunch/coffee break/happy hour at least once every two weeks for your team. You can utilize online video conferencing platforms to establish a successful remote version of the traditional in-person activity. Invite the whole team to come!
It is best not to have an agenda and try to avoid talking about work. Get to know each other on a social and personal level. This social activity helps your team members feel connected, gain a sense of community within the company, and be engaged socially.
#2. Recipe Swap
No matter where their location is in the world, everyone has to eat. So why not incorporate a little sense of team building into your cooking regime during the week. Start by asking each team member to share their favorite meal recipe. It can be for any meal.
Once everybody has submitted a recipe, challenge your team to try one out this week. The whole team can tackle the same recipe, or everyone can try something different and send in a picture of their effort, favorite choice, the most surprising recipe, etc. Make it engaging. With remote teams often comprised of people from all over the world, it can be really fun to see different recipes from different countries and cultures.
Ask your team members to submit by the end of the week. The following week, you can share the submissions with the entire team creatively and invitingly. Let your team send photos of their attempts at creating a colleague's recipe, how it went, and what they thought of it.
#3. Online Fitness Clubs
Do most of your team take time out of their traditional 9-5 workday to exercise? Just because your team can't come together in person to go for a jog or bike ride doesn't mean you can't exercise collectively or celebrate or encourage each other's fitness goals and achievements. There are apps available like Strava that allow you to track physical activity and keep up with your teammates' athletic accomplishments. Collaborative fitness apps provide analytics for personal achievements while also allowing you to share among your network of friends or colleagues. You can see what your network has been up to, comment, ask questions, and give kudos.
You can even set fitness goals among your team for anyone interested in this program. Set a walking goal for the team, an exercise time goal, and ask everyone to try out a new fitness class this week and share their experiences with the team. Creating fitness goals and collaboration is a great way to connect with others.
#4. Birth Map
It can be fun getting to know more about your colleagues, where they are from, their histories, and their backgrounds with global teams. Creating a Birth Map is a fun virtual team-building game. You may just be surprised by what you learn about your co-workers.
For this activity, you'll need to create a collaborative Google Map. You can do this by:
- Signing into a Google account
- Click Menu > Your Places > Maps
- Click "Create Map"
- Choose a central location (this can be the physical company location, P.O. Box, or anything really-try to make it significant to the company, though)
- Share your map by clicking Share > Sharing Settings and then inviting your team members to share
Once your teammates have access, they can place a sticker on where they were born. Next time you are on a video call (maybe during the virtual lunch break from #1), ask some of your colleagues to share a story from their birthplace or their favorite thing about it.
#5. Water Cooler Trivia
If you are looking for a unique but still fun way to engage with your remote team continuously, Water Cooler Trivia is a great way to do it. Water Cooler Trivia integrates your email, social media platforms, Slack, Microsoft Teams channels, or other technology solutions and automatically sends out trivia questions to your entire team each week. You can choose the schedule for the trivia, which categories would work best for your company's culture, and Water Cooler will create the questions, distribute them, and grade the results for you. You can then share the results and responses with the entire team. While small and not too time-consuming, this trivia activity may offer a nice break from online work-related stressors and activities during the week, create a mental break, and be funny depending on the responses. Give it a go!
What are the Benefits of these Virtual Team Building Activities?
The benefits of virtual team-building activities (like the ones we mentioned above) include:
- Improved collaboration among your team members.
- Enhanced company communication.
- Increased job satisfaction among the team.
- Boosted retention rates.
- Satisfied remote workers.
- Boosted productivity.
- Enhanced company culture and team culture.
- Better your business's reputation.
- Give your team members something fun and interesting to discuss outside of work; the more unique and fun the activity, the more they will talk about it and look forward to it again.
- Improved relationships among co-workers and managers.
Visit Simplicity's Resources for Remote Working and Business Continuity web page for more remote working resources.
