While we’re all stuck working remotely for the time-being, we won’t be able to building relationships with our colleagues/employees in the office together through face-to-face interactions, meetings, lunches, and office events. However, it is important for teams to engage in virtual team building games and interactions help remote workers feel included and connected to their team and the overall company culture. These activities result in happier and more productive employees, more effective teams, and a stronger company. Here are 3 simple virtual and FREE team building activities that’ll work!
1) DON’T cut the Chit-Chat
When working remotely, team members don’t have a chance to make small talk with their neighbor in the next cubicle or discuss weekend plans by the coffeemaker. Therefore, designate time for small talk during meetings for more cohesion and team bonding. It’s personal chit-chat that helps employees relate and catch up with one another.
Try spending a couple of minutes at the start of each meeting discussing personal, or department updates. Involve your team members to share a recent photo or while on the video call share their homes or something they love. These sort of team building activities helps with bringing the team closer despite the physical distance.
2. Reply all in your emails with some icebreaker questions
If you can’t find a common time slot to meet with your team, don’t let this stop your team building efforts. You can always utilize the highly used tool while working remotely – your email! Get the ball rolling by sending out an email to the group with an icebreaker question. Subsequently, ask everyone to respond to the question via email and “reply all” so that everyone gets to know each other a bit more.
The questions are up to you, be creative! They may be personal like “Where do you hope to be in ten years?”, just for fun (“If you could take a vacation anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?”). Just be sure to set some boundaries to prevent anyone from getting too comfortable.
3. Online Games
Encourage your team to join in some online team building games to bring out their team building spirit. Engaging in online team building games help increase communication, motivate your team, and build your virtual company culture that will be useful later on when there’s work to be done. This can be any game which can range from DOTA, L4D, Mobile Legends to even old-school games like Maple or Audition. Some other popular games also includes Scribble.io and Spyfall.